


The Harrowing of Chelsea Rice

by Stephen_Wormwood



Category: Original Work
Genre: Bullying, Gay, Gay Male Character, Ghost Sex, M/M, M/Other, Other, Rating: NC17, Supernatural Elements, m/m - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-08-29 05:46:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16738255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stephen_Wormwood/pseuds/Stephen_Wormwood
Summary: Chelsea is a misanthropic boy whose social awkwardness is only overpowered by his sexual frustration. To him, life feels like an endless parade of boredom and/or embarrassment. So imagine his surprise when a supernatural being makes contact with him and begins to fulfil every sexual desire he can concoct... but is he playing with fire?





	1. Nine Years Later

 

_And so it was that the boy-exile came down from the land of Nok at the head of a caravan, its eight wagons driven forth by nine oxen and the whip crack of his uncle-servant beside him. They came with a wealth of gifts for the host of Berumbaal that day, gifts of myrrh and samite and moonstone and silverlings; temptations to woo the sorcerer’s fancy. But no gift was comelier than himself – for legend fancied it (and fancied it right) that Agaroth’s court boasted sixteen brides – and all of them were men. “And so, I sell myself,” he said, “and cast away my name, that I would come to him as a virgin boy, prostrate and un-besmirched, to win his fancy,” for with the sorcerer’s great powers and armies he might yet win back the land of Nok. But would he be enough? Tonight would not be his first in meeting the Great Agaroth of Berumbaal. That was a decade past -- when the boy was a prince and his father ruled over Nok and even its surliest neighbours paid him tribute -- and so it had been that day when the mighty sorcerer came with his lavish host to the gates of his father’s palace. His Man-Brides bore his staves and standard, the White Manticore, and at the flanks of his host were fifty armoured outriders, the steel points of their magically-forged spears glinting the sunlight. Agaroth was clad imperiously that day in a ruby-encrusted gold breastplate, gilded helm and flocking white cloak. He was of wild Northern blood (so told by his wavy mane of flame-coloured hair) and seasoned in combat (also told by the straight cut scar beneath his left eye) but having made pilgrimage to the Forest of Knowledge the young barbarian had become a feared sorcerer. He marched up the steps of the great palace more god than man, yet bent the knee to his father as any man would. Why? Loyalty? Love? Not fear certainly, nor reverence. Whatever it was that earned Agaroth’s fealty in those times, the son hoped dearly that some shred of it yet remained. If that was not enough to win the sorcerer of Berumbaal over, he could only hope his gifts, and if need, be his maidenhead, would prove to be enough._

 

Satisfied with that, Chelsea exhaled and clicked the save icon. So far as introductions went he was sure he could do better -- but that was for editing and right now he was just really motivated to write. The last chapter of _The Seventeen Man-Brides of Agaroth_ was well received on his blog (fifteen comments!) despite a complaint that it was taking forever to get to the sex. But Chelsea didn’t mind it much. Hell, he took it as a compliment. All this new chapter needed was a bit of proof-reading and then he would post it.

 

“Chelsea?” It was his mother. “Can I come in?”

 

He quickly clicked minimize on the story and brought up a tab for screen protectors on EBay (something he had been spying earlier) before he let her in. Everything else was fine. His room was unusually orderly for a student – his minimal wardrobe tidily squared away inside his wardrobe and chest of drawers, his PS4 games and extra controller tucked up inside his TV unit, his books and graphic novels all carefully organized along his wall fixtures. The only untidy thing was probably an empty co-codamol packet on the carpet next to his bedside coffee table. It fell off last night and he hadn’t bothered to pick it up. “Come in.”

 

His mother padded in softly on her pink slippers. Other than those she was already dressed for work, with her hair pinned back and that grey cotton dress suit all freshly pressed and primped. Margaret Rice was a working woman in the frankest sense -- not even today of all days would she take off – nor would she allow Chelsea to do the same. “Good morning, Chelsea. How… how are you doing today?”

 

_There’s two dozen balled up tissues in my bin_ , thought Chelsea. _That’s how I’m doing_. “I’m okay. Just working on my novel.”

 

“Cool beans,” she said. “Maybe one of these days you’ll even tell me what it’s about?”

 

_It’s about an ignorant boy selling his arsehole to an evil warlock in exchange for his country. For Christ’s sake, I’ll never tell you about it_. “Maybe.”

 

And then the room went silent. Chelsea’s shoulders depressed as he watched his mother struggle for something to say, something to keep the pretence of a healthy conversation going before she brought up the inevitable. He didn’t wait long.

 

“Chelsea, it’s okay to let it out sometimes,” said Margaret. “I know how much you miss Nancy.”

 

_You don’t have a clue._ “I know that, Mum. I’m fine.”

 

Margaret gave him that narrow-eyed ‘don’t lie to me’ glare but she didn’t press the matter. She knew better than that. As a kid, Chelsea recalled his Dad telling her to “let him grieve his own way” and to her credit she had held to that – but only grudgingly. Maybe that was one of the reasons Chelsea didn’t like his mother very much? It wasn’t enough for her to **know** that he was hurting, she had to **see** it for herself, like he had to prove something to her. She didn’t really understand him, but he understood her too well. They would never be close.

 

Margaret sighed in defeat. “Be back on time, okay? We’re going to light a candle for her.”

 

Lighting a candle on the anniversary of his sister’s disappearance was a tradition now. Every May 9th, their own personal 9/11. Tonight’s candle would be the ninth.

 

“Okay.” He said.

 

She frowned at him. Then she told him “goodbye” and shut the door behind her.

 

**********

That morning Chelsea followed all the rituals of preparation for college attendance in a quiet, blank haze. He took a shower, combed his hair, spritzed himself with some Lynx, ironed his shirt and trousers, slipped them on and topped them off with his dark navy blazer and maroon tie. He went over his homework, grabbed all the notebooks and text books he needed for today’s classes then stuffed them all into his satchel. His Dad called up to him and asked him if he wanted any breakfast before he left for college and Chelsea yelled back, “No, but thank you!”

 

Better for him to pick something up on the way than suffer another awkward, unhelpful conversation about the anniversary. His head was killing him again so before he left he went into the kitchen and popped two co-codamol with some Evian. His father Tom stood by the hob frying eggs. Margaret’s dishes sat in the sink waiting to be washed. “Sure you don’t want some, Chelsea? I could scramble them with cheese and put some prosciutto on the side, just like you used to like.”

 

_Like Nancy and I used to like_ , thought Chelsea. “Seriously, I’m fine, Dad. But thank you.”

 

His father pulled a soft smile and shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said. And to Chelsea’s great relief he left it at that. Tom Rice was a burly guy, 6.5 in height with a bushy black beard to match it, but his appearance said nothing of his character. He was calm and attentive and considerate, and comfortable letting Chelsea express himself the way he wanted. When Margaret gave him shit for growing out his hair so long (all the way past his shoulder blades) Tom convinced her to let it be. Tom had become a kind of peace broker between his son and his wife these last few years. 

 

“Get home from school on time,” he said. “And don’t buy any food on the way, I’m making macaroni and cheese tonight.”

 

“Okay,” said Chelsea. “Bye, Dad.”

 

Tom waved him goodbye with an eggy spatula.

 

The boy wasn’t stupid. He knew his father was just putting on a brave face for him. You see unlike Margaret; Tom couldn’t work on the anniversary. Before long he would un-pocket his iPhone and thumb through his daughter’s old photos. He would cry a bit, call up Grandma White in Nottingham, maybe even break something; but he’d get it all out of his system and be strong for Margaret and Chelsea when they got back home. His way of coping suited both his wife and his son. Margaret liked the fact that he processed his feelings. Chelsea liked the fact that he kept them to himself.

 

Outside, Chelsea popped his Sony MDR-EX110APs into his ears and put on the first track of his favourite playlist (01 – Theme of Laura). He walked from his house in Dulwich Village to East Dulwich for a 185. In Pimlico he stopped off at _Pret a Manger_ for a coffee and a hoisin duck wrap then hoofed it the rest of the way to college.

 

**********

 

The campus of Pimlico Manor College stood a stone’s throw away from the Thames; its black-painted gates visible from the southern side of Vauxhall Bridge should you find yourself gaping through the top windows of a double decker. It was a co-ed private school of Margaret’s choice (one she fully intended for Chelsea and Nancy to attend together) that so far as he knew plucked 2.5 grand per year out of her pocket. Not that money was a problem -- when his Grandpa White died in 2011, his will stated that a full quarter of his leavings (roughly £72,000) was to go to Chelsea’s schooling. Between his sterling SATs results and the enthusiastic endorsements of some of his old teachers Margaret was determined to get him in. Back in those days the shock of losing Nancy was still raw in everyone’s mind. In hindsight? Maybe Margaret struggling so hard to get Chelsea into this school was her way of pretending that everything was still on track. Maybe if Nancy were still here to go with him, he would have loved it. But in truth…

 

Chelsea walked in through the stone archway of the Damilola Taylor Gate with his hands around his satchel’s strap and his eyes to the ground. No one greeted him. Not that they were nameless to him. He knew them all. Corey Ellis, Janice Mayweather, Shola Echinowoke, Mustafa Abdullah, John Jacobs; everyone was there -- but there was no one to talk to. It may have been his penultimate year at Pimlico Manor but he was as friendless a wonder now as he was during his first. Now _that_ was a time. During his enrolment he was the _weirdo_ whose sister was in the news, his parents crying their way through a press conference as they begged anyone for information to step forward (there were still YouTube clips of the news report floating around out there). Yet as the years came and went he never got past that initial stigma of the _weirdo_ – cliques rose and fell around him, romances grew and withered in his presence, teachers came and teachers went – but he was never a part of any of it. His place was in the backdrop of a grand drama which (after a while) amounted to little more than white noise. Whispers may yet have abounded; “Did you hear about Sally Keans? Fucking preggo!” or “Tony and Will are gonna fight after school” or “Did Denny really do a Snapchat of Annabelle’s knickers?” but little of it filtered through to Chelsea Rice. Except…

 

“Oi! Rice Krispies!”

 

_Fuck. Not today Jonno, please…_ But he did. Over by one of the courtyard benches with his two cronies, Leo Cutter and Ahmed Medhi, sat Johnathan “Jonno” Wilford – and words could not adequately describe how confused Chelsea’s feelings were towards him. Physically he was everything the captain of a school rugby team should be; tall, limber and naturally muscled. Mentally he was _also_ everything the captain of a school rugby team should be; dumb, competitive, and unthoughtful. Yet he was something else too.

 

Fucking beautiful.

 

Talk about a boy _kissed by fire_ with that wavy carrot top. You could drink water out of his dimples, they were so deep and kissable. Even the little scar underneath his left eye, the one he got from fighting a Year 11 boy two years ago, even that was cute. For the past year Jonno Wilford was the one thing in this whole school that had one iota of Chelsea’s attention. How many times had he daydreamed about Jonno dragging him behind a bike shed one day and unbuckling his trousers? How many wet dreams had he dreamt of Jonno climbing through his bedroom window in the middle of the night? Too many to count.

 

But none of that took away from the fact that Jonno Wilford was a complete fucking dickhead.

 

Everyone else at college was content to let ‘weirdo Chelsea’ be ‘weirdo Chelsea’ but not Jonno. If he needed someone to call him a pussy or a batty boy? Jonno was there. If he needed someone to trip him up in the corridor or steal his pencil case? Jonno was there. If he needed someone to take pictures of him falling into the mud and post them on Facebook? _Jonno was there_. Always smiling, always smug, always oblivious.

 

Some time ago it occurred to Chelsea that all Jonno’s physical beauty was wasted on a mental pygmy. His mother might have been a barrister but she had a son destined to salt fries at _McDonalds_ , or impregnate his first drunken fumble at _Tiger Tiger_. Yet in thinking about it, Chelsea didn't begrudge the hypothetical bitch -- at least she'd get a taste of the ‘physical’.

 

“Heads up, ponce!”

 

A wadded up Sausage and Egg McMuffin wrapper whirled past Chelsea’s head and (coincidentally) hit the rim of a waste basket. He pretended not to notice. Jonno laughed, bumping knuckles with Leo and Ahmed before his girlfriend Riya Malhotra approached their bench and leaned in for her morning kiss and hug.

 

Chelsea hoped they gave each other mono.

 

**********

Classes were not much better that day. After signing the register with the rest of his tutor group he went across campus to the humanities building for Geography with Mrs. O’Neil. It was one of three lessons he had the misfortune of sharing with both Jonno and Riya. As usual Chelsea took his place at the rightmost desk of the rearmost row, took out his notebook and textbook in silence, as everyone around him slowly filtered in, chatting and laughing and texting. Three minutes to ten Jonno came in with Riya beneath his arm. Their desks were one across from Chelsea’s. The middle one was usually occupied by Thomas Marquis but (as Chelsea was soon to learn) Thomas Marquis was off with the flu today and there wasn’t a soul around to shield him from the sight of Jonno and Riya cooing at each other.

 

Jonno’s cupid’s bow gave Chelsea butterflies. Watching Riya sneak kisses on it made him retch. Even so he couldn’t help watching them out of the corner of his eye, watch them hold hands under the desk and natter about their plans for the weekend, all until Mrs. O’Neil arrived.

 

Chelsea sat up, Jonno and Riya let each other go, and all the talking and laughing and horsing about stopped as the 54-year old Irish woman waddled in on her clunking mules to take a seat behind her desk. Everyone who hadn’t already done so did the same.

 

“Alright class,” her accent was thick as custard as she popped the lid off her marker and turned to the whiteboard. “Let’s pick up where we left off yesterday? All of you turn to page 225 – plate tectonics.”

 

Everyone turned their pages. Except Jonno. Instead (whilst Mrs. O’Neil started talking) he slipped out his HTC 10 and thumbed a text. Chelsea couldn’t help himself from watching as Riya felt a buzz in her own pocket, took her phone beneath the desk, and giggled at whatever it was Jonno just sent her. They smiled at each other. Chelsea frowned daggers.

 

“Do you see something more interesting than my class, Chelsea?”

 

Chelsea looked up. Mrs. O’Neil was staring him down. When the whole class turned back to look at him, Jonno and Riya quickly hid their phones and looked away.

 

“Well?” Pressed Mrs. O’Neil. “Is there something in the general vicinity of Johnathan and Riya that’s more interesting to you than my class? Because if there is please share it with the rest of us.”

 

His cheeks went red hot with embarrassment. “N-no ma’am.”

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“Yes ma’am.”

 

Mrs. O’Neil frowned. “Good. Then kindly join the rest of us and pay attention, thank you very much. Now. Where were we?”

 

_Bitch_. His classmates stifled their giggles and returned to the lesson. Chelsea flipped open his textbook to page 225 to keep up, that was until he heard a slight chuckle on his right. It was Jonno, grinning like a sociopath and mouthing something at him that roughly equated to; “You. Are. Such. A. Dumb. Fucking. Faggot.”

 

**********

 

He was sobbing too loudly. Although he was alone in the toilets (as he made sure of before he ducked into them) the echo was too loud. Chelsea stopped himself, sniffled, and scrubbed the snot from his nose. It wasn’t just embarrassing him in front of the class that bugged him. It was her purposefully doing it in front of Jonno. His headache was back. Without water he swallowed two co-codamol.

 

There were no words to describe how much Chelsea hated Old Mrs. Siobhan O’Neil.

 

Chelsea Rice was not known amongst the faculty as a ‘problem pupil’ but he had had many a run-in with Mrs. O’Neil. It started in halfway through Year 8 when he stopped wanting people to like him and started enjoying being left alone. He began polishing his fingernails black (and his toenails -- though no one from school could see it) and grew his hair out until it was as long as Nancy’s was when they were kids. There were no written restrictions for either at this school but old Bitchface took issue with it anyway. Every day she told him he could no longer come to class looking like he did, and every following day he came to class looking exactly the same, until one random Thursday when Mrs. O’Neil just decided that she had had enough and sent him to the deputy head, Miss Appleby. What followed was a day to remember – unsheathed paperwork followed by a failed attempt at excoriation that Chelsea was smart enough to know was unearned, so he called Margaret and Margaret called Tom and the pair of them left work to come down to the college. Margaret demanded to know why her son was denied two hours’ worth of tutelage over something that could have been hashed out before or after school hours. Miss Appleby tried to calm her down by explaining why. Margaret said that wasn’t good enough then demanded to see Mrs. O’Neil. Mrs. O’Neil was pulled out of her last lesson of the day to explain that Chelsea’s dress sense presented a ‘distraction’ for the other students. Then Tom brought the whole thing to a victorious end – and declared that Chelsea’s hair length and nail polish was “an expression of his gender identity” and to “castigate” him for it was “tantamount to an act of discrimination”.

 

Miss Appleby winced (and Mrs. O’Neil looked for all the world like she’d just stained her shoe with a _Guardian_ reader), but it worked. Mrs. O’Neil was excused and the following day the headmaster himself offered Tom and Margaret written and verbal apologies for the way their son had been treated that day.

 

But ever since then Mrs. O’Neil hated him.

 

She NEVER passed up an opportunity to humiliate him in front of the rest of the class and no matter how much or how hard he studied his results in Geography were always middling to poor (in contrast to every other class he took, besides PE). When the day came for Chelsea to leave this place Mrs. O’Neil was one of people he’d most enjoy seeing the back of.

 

Chelsea scrubbed the tears from his eyes. Neither Jonno nor Mrs. O’Neil were worth it. He unwrapped his arms from his knees then one after the other took his shoes off the toilet seat and stood upright. All that was left was for him to step outside and go to his next lesson. But he didn’t move. He had his hand on the knob – but it was trembling. He couldn’t move. A tear threatened to drop again.

 

And then he felt it.

 

The single best word to describe it was a sensation -- but it was so much more than that. It was a soothing warmth that seeped beneath the fabric of his blazer and his shirt all the way down to his skin until his whole upper body was bathed in it. It was a tender feeling. It felt like an embrace. A kind one. A warm one. Chelsea shivered at the tingle of it, some passing trick of the mind upon the body, and shivered as he let himself enjoy it… until it faded.

 

And then he opened the door.

 

Chelsea twisted the tap over one of the enamel basins to wash his face. Then as he was about to leave he noticed something someone had scrawled into a fogged up mirror pane overhanging all six basins. It said;

 

_IT’S GOING TO BE ALRIGHT._

 

There was no telling what amateur artist wrote that but for some dumb, insane reason… it made him feel better. “I hope so,” he whispered to himself. “I really hope so.”

 

**********

 

After Geography came a less stressful lesson of Religious Studies. Although Chelsea shared the class with Riya there was no Jonno (thankfully) and the teacher, Mr. Santiago, was notoriously chill. He made notes on Mormonism, Neo Paganism and Scientology for an upcoming essay on the ‘lack of social sanctity’ of new religions. After that was 1st break (which he spent in a discrete corner of the lunch hall with a can of Apple Tango and a printed copy of the _Dark Eidolon)._ Then he had English Lit with Miss Michaels and after that rung the bell for lunch.

 

It was a beautiful day today. The sun was shining and you couldn’t see the clouds for the blue, so Chelsea decided to have his lunch at his favourite spot in school; the ‘alleyway’ between the library and the freshly re-painted humanities building. He loved it because it was always quiet (and out of the way from the rest of the playground), it had benches to sit on and when the weather was nice and hot the building provided shade. It was a nice place to be outdoors and left alone. Finally feeling better after his run ins with Jonno and Mrs. O’Neil, Chelsea stretched out over one of the wooden benches, sneakily slipped his earphones in to listen to Track 02 – White Noiz, then enjoyed the packed lunch Tom made for him earlier that morning; a cold salad of tuna, sweetcorn, penne pasta and sauce with an apple for dessert and a carton of Ribena to drink. After eating he took out his _Dark Eidolon_ again, convinced it was going to be a good lunch break. That was before he overheard whispers. Chelsea turned down his music (already low just to make sure a teacher didn’t catch him with his buds on) and leaned over the bench’s arm to see what was going on around the corner.

 

It was Jonno and Riya. The rugby captain had his girlfriend up against the wall with his hands on her hips and his tongue down her throat.

 

There was a punching pain in Chelsea’s chest as he watched them scrawl over each other. It was nowhere near as bad as the first time he’d seen them kiss (replace ‘punching’ with ‘stabbing’ in that instance) but it still hurt; resentment and longing like a cocktail, like an ache, like a stone in his throat. And feeling those things made him _feel_ stupid because, looking at the two of them, he felt for all the world like swapping places with Riya – and he couldn’t help it. What would it be like if Jonno stopped tormenting him for just one second and really looked at him? What would he find? Maybe someone who kissed just as good as she could? Someone who would do things to him that Riya wouldn’t even consider. If Jonno pushed him to his knees and opened his trousers… Chelsea wouldn’t say no.

 

But Jonno was a fucking idiot and all that fucking idiot wanted was Riya.

 

_Fuck you,_ Chelsea thought. _Fuck you, Jonno._

 

And then a bucket of white emulsion fell on the two of them.

 

No one, not Chelsea and certainly not Jonno and Riya, saw it coming. The painters who did the renovations for the humanities building two weeks ago must have left it there. Maybe one of them left the bucket too close to the ledge and a good breeze finally just knocked it off. All Chelsea knew was that one second his crush/bully was kissing someone else and the next they were both drenched in white paint. Riya screamed. A bunch of other students heard that and came running to see what was going on (and the students further away saw that and followed _them_ to see what the fuss was) and so thirty odd kids barrelled around the corner to see a slopped-and-crying Riya hide behind a slopped-and-fuming Jonno yelling “fuck off!” at the gawking crowd they now had. Laughter ripped throughout the group. A Year 9 boy, Tyrone Whyte, took out his Galaxy S7 and started chanting “WORLDSTAR!” as Riya ran inside the building and Jonno threatened in vain to knock his teeth out.

 

And Chelsea grinned.

 

**********

 

Jonno and Riya’s dunking was the talk of the day. Apparently, there were no spare clothes for them, so Riya called her parents to collect her early. Jonno spent the rest of the day in a green rugby shirt and smeared black trousers. Payback was a fucking bitch. Any other day Chelsea might have enjoyed the whole thing a bit more. Hell, he would’ve taken a picture of the whole thing and made it his desktop background! But as the day wore on, he found himself thinking more and more about Nancy.

 

If there was anything Chelsea wondered (besides the obvious) it was what she would have been like if they had been allowed to grow up together. He had _dreamt_ about it. In his those dreams they were always the best of friends, going to school together, going out together, shopping together, eating together; everything. He saw himself and Nancy ogling boys in Westfield over a shared smoothie or waterfall braiding each other’s hair to play Anne Boleyn and Lady Rochford (in public, not at home) and baffle all the simpletons. That was what life had cheated him out of -- not merely his sister but his best friend.

 

So when the last bell rang Chelsea called his Dad and told a lie.

 

“Mrs. O’Neil gave me an hour’s detention for forgetting my textbook,” he said. “I’m going to be late home. Sorry.”

 

Tom sighed on the other side of the conversation. “Just get back as soon as possible,” he said. Chelsea promised that he would even as he was making his way through Millbank and up Vauxhall Bridge Road towards Pimlico tube station. Listening to Track 03 – Forest, he tapped his Oyster at the barrier and from there made a very long journey of changeover – from Pimlico Station to Stockwell, from Stockwell Station to Moorgate via the Northern Line, then from Moorgate to Liverpool Street via the Circle Line, then from Liverpool Street to Chingford. Though it took the better part of the hour he bought himself with his little white lie, from Chingford it was only a brisk walk to Epping Forest.

 

_On May 9 th, 2008 a little girl named Nancy Elizabeth Rice attended a field trip to Epping Forest with Class A7 of Buckhurst Hill Preparatory School. It was a nature walk between 14 students and 3 faculty members that began at approximately 11:09am. At around 12:45pm Nancy Rice became separated from the group and at roughly 13:31pm she was reported missing. Her parents, Thomas and Margaret Rice were notified, and a police search was conducted from 5:08pm onwards. Nancy’s backpack and one of her Wellington boots was recovered from a tree around 1.3 miles north of the site of her initial disappearance, but beyond that no trace of her was ever found. Thomas and Margaret Rice held three separate press conferences urging anyone with any information to come forward. Numerous hoax/false leads were run through by investigators and Iain Duncan Smith (the MP for Chingford and Woodford Green) made a statement about the ‘tragic disappearance of Nancy Rice’ in the Commons._

That was a rough portion of the Wikipedia entry on his sister’s disappearance.

 

He wandered into the forest by one of the south eastern entrances. From there, there were no black painted gates or foot-high walls to keep people out, just tall bushes and a thick procession of oak trees brooking the way. The blue skies had turned to porridge above him, and some brief but heavy rain earlier had made mulch of the footpath. Chelsea kept walking though. He had nowhere in particular to go and he had long since forgotten the particular sights and locations of _the Nancy Rice investigation_. He just liked to come to Epping Forest every few months and wander around. And to think. He had been doing it since he was thirteen. His parents never knew. They didn’t need to. It was what Chelsea needed. And there was a twisted beauty in Epping. The trees, the springs, the rustling leaves shivering through the wind, the foxes and the sparrows, the chirping crickets and distant twig snaps. Sometimes Chelsea took it all in and imagined becoming lost in it. Maybe _there_ (that is to say, wherever serendipity took him) he would find his sister. That was what Margaret didn’t understand about Chelsea. There was a _reason_ he could not grieve the way she did.

 

It was because he _knew_ Nancy was still alive.

 

Chelsea did not know how. He did not know why. But he _knew_. He _knew_ she was still alive somewhere out there. Tom and Margaret had given up hope. As far as they were concerned she was dead, snatched up and murdered by some psychopathic paedophile. That was the Police’s final take on the matter (especially since another child, an eight-year-old boy named Stephen Fryer, also went missing in Epping six days prior to Nancy’s disappearance). Even without a body to bury she was gone in their eyes. But not to Chelsea.

 

The footpath took two turns. One curled eastward around a half-broken stone wall with directions toward Ranger’s Road, Cuckoo Brook and the Ching. The second shot straight onward off Bury Road with a fan of branching footpaths leading off in various directions across the thicket. Chelsea picked one of the latter at random. He didn’t care where he was going, and he wasn’t paying attention to the time. His phone battery was a few percentiles shy of death, but he wasn’t bothered. He just wanted to wander through the forest like his sister had done nine years ago and see.

 

And then he saw something.

 

A burned building.

 

It was charred to a crisp yet upright. A ruin. A three-storey building partially collapsed upon itself with half its front wall tumbled into smoky flotsam by the footpath. The blackened boards of its first and second floors were broken open like the bones of an exposed ribcage with garbage piled throughout; burnt clothes and oaken furniture fused into lumps of charcoal. Ash suffused the wreck like snow. Yet moss grew where rainwater caught the fractured limbs of rickety rafters through a cracked open roof. Police tape and hazard cones blocked the ruins off from the curious (and the curiously stupid).

 

It seemed like an old tragedy (some conservationist’s home and security gone up in flames one tragic night perhaps) yet Chelsea could almost taste the cinders in the air. The scent of smoke was still alive around it. _This could have happened years ago,_ he thought. _Or yesterday._

 

Chelsea wondered what happened here for a while – then gave up wondering and kept on up the footpath bearing northeast. There were some bushes nearby. He noticed the signpost in front of them directing the way to Hornbeam Lane. What he did not notice was that there was someone hiding in the shadows of those bushes – and that that person was watching him _very_ intently.


	2. First Contact

“Baby, do you have the matches?” Asked Margaret.

 

Tom nodded. “I have them right here.”

 

Chelsea yawned.

 

It was dark when he got home from Chingford. Margaret was there before he was (her offices were in Merton and she didn’t finish work until 5:30pm most days) but neither of them gave him shit for it. Today wasn’t the day. Instead Tom just told him to take off his shoes (encrusted with mud after traipsing around a forest half the afternoon) put his clothes in the wash then come downstairs for tea. Chelsea went to his bedroom. The window was open for some reason. It was cold though so he shut it. After checking his e-mails and blog he undid his tie, unbuttoned his shirt and unbuckled his trousers, caught a quick shower then changed into some khaki shorts and a _Fallout 4_ t-shirt. And now that he was home he pulled the braid out of his hair and let it loose. Chelsea loved letting his hair down. It was really curly and hard to manage (and he found himself biting it when he was nervous) but he liked the way his hair looked when he left it loose. On his _Note 4_ he had 90+ selfies of him just combing it in front of the bathroom mirror. After changing he went downstairs to a macaroni and cheese meal with Tom and Margaret.

 

The candle lighting wasn’t until later on that evening.

 

About 9pm (when all the soaps were done and all the washing was in the dryer) Chelsea, Tom and Margaret went out into the back garden. Since his mother was a bit of green thumb the garden was trim and well-tended, the wooden fences hemmed up by ceramic pots of freesia and dandelions. All Chelsea and Nancy’s old play sets (the push chair, the paddling pool, etc.) were locked inside the shed. And in the middle of the garden they had a picnic table shielded over by a yellow and white striped parasol. Chelsea took a seat on it whilst Tom fetched the matches and Margaret brought out a thick lavender candle on top of a circular silver tray. They lit the candle together then took each other’s hands.

 

“Dear God,” Margaret whispered. “Please watch over our dear Nancy. Keep her in your thoughts as we keep her in our prayers. She was a light to us and always will be. Bless her and keep giving us the strength to go on until the day we finally get to see her again. Amen.”

 

Tom went next.

 

“I miss you, Nancy. So much. So terribly. I miss the way you put smiles on everyone’s faces, especially mine! I miss hearing you laugh. I miss watching you eat. I miss my beautiful little girl. Understand that wherever you are we’re always with you. And you’re always with us.”

 

And then it was Chelsea’s turn.

 

But he didn’t want to say anything. He wasn’t religious (like Margaret) or spiritual (like Tom). Being in a writer he wasn’t in any way inarticulate, he just didn’t have anything to say. Both his parents glared at him. Margaret especially. With each second, she looked more and more annoyed by his silence. Her grip tightened around his as if to say; _say something_. But what could he say knowing what he knew in his heart to be true?

 

The boy couldn’t look them in the eyes. They must have thought he was just being cold. Margaret certainly thought that. _And on today of all days_. But it wasn’t _like_ that. And he certainly didn’t care less than they did. They may have lost a daughter but they still had a son and they still had each other. Once Nancy was gone Chelsea had _no one_. The closest person in the world to him was lost and no one could fill that void. No one had any right to.

 

He didn’t want to hurt them. The candle lighting was important to them and Chelsea respected that – but he was sick of lying for their sake when his heart was screaming to him that Nancy was still alive out there.

 

“I can’t,” said Chelsea.

 

Margaret scoffed. “What do you mean you can’t-”

 

“That’s enough,” said Tom. “Chelsea, if this is too much for you, you don’t have to.”

 

“Tom! For God’s sake, all he has to do is say a few words, he’s done it before!”

 

“Yes but you don’t have to _pressure_ him into it.”

 

“I’m not, I’m-”

 

“May I be excused?” Chelsea interjected. “Please?”

 

Margaret released his hand. Tom glared at her. Chelsea didn’t care. He knew why she was mad. From her perspective maybe she had every right to be. But she let him go. Chelsea he went back inside and up the stairs to his bedroom but before he even closed the door the argument kicked off. “You’re too lenient with him, Thomas! That’s why he keeps acting this way! You’re encouraging him!” His Dad shot back, “It’s better than bullying him into being something he’s not! Maybe he’d open up to us more if you stopped suffocating the bloody boy!”

 

Chelsea threw himself onto his bed, popped two co-codamol, plugged his Sennheisers into his Note 4 and turned up the volume as high as it would go then put on Track 04 – A World of Madness. _Fuck this shit_ , he thought ruefully. _Fuck this shit. Fuck this shit. Fuck this shit. Fuck this shit. Fuck this shit. Fuck this shit. Fuck this shit!_

 

**********

 

It was on that night (May 9th 2016) that **it** first made contact with Chelsea Rice.

 

 **********

 

It was 12:07am.

 

An hour earlier Tom and Margaret had stopped arguing. From then they washed the dishes, emptied the dryer and shut off the lights (all in silence). Half an hour later they went to bed with a slammed door. Chelsea was only partially aware this as he buried himself in anything his room had to offer. He played _Arkham Knight_ for a bit, then _Dark Souls 3_ (before hitting a bit of an impasse with the Dancer of the Boreal Valley and rage quitting) then watched some _Wolf Hall_. None of it had blocked out Tom and Margaret’s bickering. So he went back to music (donning his headphones and cranking up the volume on _The Dismemberment Plan_ ) and resumed his work on the _Seventeen Man-Brides of Agaroth_.

 

_The boy-exile_ , he wrote, _called for his caravan to make camp at the first sight of the moon and forged a laager inside the nearest copse. The thicket walls provided firewood and good cover for his men to watch for intruders and (as game was unusually bountiful here) before long they had some skinned hares roasting over a cooking fire. All ate heartily. Yet he warned his spearmen to remain watchful. The road from Nok to Berumbaal was a long and dangerous one, much as his uncle servant had warned him._

_“I suggest not following the Black Road,” the Black Road being the region’s main thoroughfare. “We should make our way through the bog lands. A longer journey to be sure but far safer.”_

_The prince concurred. With the King’s fall and the subsequent dissolution of the Nokian army, the roads had become feeding grounds for bandits and slavers. Without their goods they had nothing to offer Agaroth. The boy heard tell that the sorcerer once turned down an offer of marriage from the nephew of the God Emperor of the East because his dowry of eighteen silverback war horses was ‘palpably insufficient’. Would the offer of a kingdom be enough to woo Agaroth?_

_The boy-exile slept unwell wondering._

_The following morning his caravan broke camp and made for the bog lands of Tur. They left the forest and took a dirt path by the lowlands that stretched clear of the Black Road by six miles. And with their horses so well rested the excursion was over by the high sun. But their great progress was hampered when they came across a checkpoint._

_Not so much a checkpoint actually, more a sweeping 15-foot-high log-and-rope bulwark stretching from one end of the forest to the other. Crossbowmen stood guard by makeshift crenels. There were 20-foot-high watchtowers every 50 yards but only one gate. At the rampart above it sat a fat man in a half helm, muddy steel greaves and a black tabard. He scratched his beard nonchalantly._

_“Who goes there?” Yelled the fat man’s man-at-arms. “I say who goes there?”_

_The boy-exile and his uncle servant rode at the head of their caravan. Both were moved to speak on the other’s behalf but only one had the authority to do so, the boy. “I am Aleithor Kortayne, foreign vassal of the burgher’s guild at the Salt Sea Ports,” Such a smoothly cut lie. “I have come to strike trade with a Tilesian silk merchant in Berumbaal some four moons hence… if I will be so allowed. Might I ask to whom **I** speak?”_

_The man-at-arms gestured to the fat man. “You have the honour of addressing Lord Gharlin! Toll keeper of the eastern barricade and liege lord of the Bog of Tur!”_

_‘A puffed ex-soldier’, thought the boy-exile. Who else but an up-jumped baseborn would be so proud as to declare himself lord of a bog? No doubt he was someone’s captain during the King’s Fall, someone promised a title for helping stab his father in the back. Men like this were the downfall of Nok. “Lord Gharlin does me a great honour in receiving me.”_

_Gharlin whispered something into his man-at-arms’ ear. He shouted back, “Lord Gharlin declares that he has not yet received you and bids you state your business!”_

_‘I have already stated it,’ thought the prince, contemptuously. “The Black Road is too dangerous for traders. We request passage through the eastern barricade so that we may conduct our affairs in peace. We are more than willing to pay the toll.”_

_Gharlin leered at the boy. Rather than speak through his aide (as he had done thus far) he dragged his fat shanks off his stool and stood upright, scratching at his peppercorn beard with a grin-full of yellowing giblet teeth. “What have you to pay?”_

_There was a pouch on his uncle servant’s belt that he opened for the toll keeper to look._

_“100 golds,” said the boy-exile. “May we pass?”_

_Gharlin grin deepened. “Aye. But you will pay first. You and you alone, ‘Aleithor Kortayne’.”_

_Angered by the very thought, his uncle servant reached for his scimitar and his guards took up their spears -- in turn the crossbowmen at the bulwark took position at their crenels. Gharlin did not flinch. He may have been witless human swine but he had the advantage and he knew it. They could only pass on **his** terms. So the fallen prince raised a hand and his guards stood down. Gharlin did the same and his soldiers stepped away from the crenels. The boy then took the gold pouch from his uncle servant and nodded “yes” to the toll keeper’s demands. _

_“OPEN THE GATES!” Yelled the man-at-arms._

_Gharlin descended the rampart’s steps as the bulwark’s internal mechanisms whirled together in cacophonous harmony to open its thick arched doors. The boy-exile gave his uncle servant a reassuring paean, “I will be fine,” and coaxed his gelding inward._

_Beyond the wall the eastern barricade was mistakable for a war-time fortification. Between the first and secondary walls was an 80-foot-wide tract full of barracks, armouries, kilns, wells, tents, cooking spits and latrines. There were perhaps as many as fifty men in this area alone and they were not lightly equipped either. All wore boiled leather armour and broadswords as well as cowhide cloaks to shield them from the weather. Not even in his father’s day was a checkpoint so well manned._

_The boy-exile dismounted and asked one of the soldiers to take his horse. Then Gharlin appeared._

_“Come with me,” he said grinning._

_His quarters were a log cabin built against the southern side of the barricade. It was decorated with rams’ skulls, elk horns and buckskins. There were no tables or chairs but a cowhide rug and a straw pallet with goat’s wool pillows astride a well stoked hearth. There was an ewer of wine and two goblets atop a ledge._

_Gharlin closed the door behind them._

_“If I may be so bold,” the boy-exile forced himself to be mannerly to this scoundrel, “You desire an extra fee, correct?”_

_“Correct.”_

_So typical. Skim an extra 40 or 50 golds out of the traders and neither his men nor his master need know about it. Luckily the boy escaped Nok **before** the traitors broke open the treasury. He took a second pouch of gold out his robes and tossed both at the toll keeper’s feet. “That’s 200 in total. More than a fair price for our passage.”_

_Gharlin grinned and disregarded the coin as though it were a fallen crust of bread. Instead he went over to the ledge and nonchalantly poured himself a goblet of wine. “I ain’t so sure that’s a fair price,” declared the fat soldier. “I’ve had Salt Sea merchants pay me far more than a few hundred golds, boy. I dare say you’ve **got** more in that caravan of yours. Do you not?”_

_‘Wretched bastard,’ thought the prince. “What do you want?”_

_Gharlin’s smile darkened. He sloshed the wine about his cup a moment, eying the boy over from foot to toe, then swallowed it down in one gulp and wiped his beard clean. He took slow clunking steps forward until the gap between the two of them was as thin as a blade. The boy did not back away. He thought Gharlin meant to intimidate him. ‘I am crown prince of Nok,’ he thought. ‘I shall not be bullied by some baseborn lout with a false lordship! I am-’_

_“Take off your robes,” ordered Gharlin._

_The boy paused. “I-I beg your pardon?”_

_“You think your birth’s beyond my ken? You call yourself a Salt Sea Trader with a fucking Nokian accent? You ain’t going to Berumbaal for trade, boy, you fancy yourself Agaroth’s next whore.”_

_He underestimated this man! The boy-exile stepped back, his lie exposed, his uncle servant and his guards nowhere close enough to help. “You can’t do this…”_

_Gharlin eyed the boy’s supple neck. “Care to wager?”_

_“I am going to be the seventeenth bride of Agaroth,” he said._

_“Not tonight you’re not,” The toll keeper’s slap came so suddenly it knocked the boy off his feet. The boy-exile cried out and fell backwards into Gharlin’s bedding, his cheek flushing red instantaneously. “Now take off your robes.”_

_“Agaroth won’t stand for-”_

_“You ain’t even won his favour yet. Reckon you’d **ever** win it if I made my men slaughter your guards, steal your goods and send you packing? A pauper without a dowry?”_

_There was no reasoning with him. He knew without knowing that this bastard had done this before. Screaming, the boy leapt to his feet for the door but before he even had four steps to the ground, Gharlin’s massive arm reached around and snatched his own, hurling him like a doll back down onto the bedding. He cried out in some vain hope that his uncle servant might hear him until Gharlin pushed two of his massive fingers into the boy’s mouth. The fat soldier climbed on top of him and licked at his face. It was no use resisting him. Though fat and jowly, battle-hardened muscled sat beneath Gharlin’s flesh. Soldiers did not become lords without some degree of strength or martial skill._

_“Please!” whimpered the boy in muffled tones, “Please Lord Gharlin…!”_

_He grinned. “Oh, don’t fret none. You can keep your maidenhead. I ain’t so unchivalrous as all that. Your mouth will do. Now. Take. Off. Your Robes.”_

Chelsea wasn’t sure where to go with the boy-exile’s current predicament. Having him ‘soiled’ before Agaroth got a taste felt counter-intuitive. Maybe he could devise a quick escape for the boy? Perhaps the war horns would suddenly sound and some organized bandits with falchions and climbing hooks would attack the checkpoint from the south – and give the prince’s caravan an opportunity to escape? It made sense. Bandit raids justified the wall’s being so heavily manned (especially during such social upheaval as the King’s Fall). Why not?

 

Chelsea yawned.

 

He had school tomorrow and he was satisfied with what he’d written. Maybe it was better to sleep now and update the chapter tomorrow? That sounded like a plan. Chelsea stretched out his arms, saved the chapter, then shut down his PC. Once again his window was open without him even being aware of it. Chelsea shut it then drew the curtains and walked over to his bathroom. He shivered (the chequered tiles were chilly on his bare feet). The metal hoops around the rung screeched as he pulled open his shower curtains and twisted the red dial. A patter of hot water gushed down. Chelsea left it to run as he got his clothes off. He crossed his thin arms over his stomach and pulled his _Fallout 4_ t-shirt over his head then unbuttoned his khaki shorts and stepped out of them (one leg after the other). Then he hooked his thumbs beneath the elastic of his navy blue boxers, pulled them off, and snuck softly inside the shower compartment. There was some Palmolive and blackberry-scented Original Source on the shelf inside. He mixed the two together to soap himself up with, running the lather up and down his arms, neck, chest, stomach, bum, penis and legs. Afterwards he scrubbed at himself with a soaking sponge. Fifteen minutes later Chelsea came out refreshed as hell to towel himself off in the mirror.

 

He glared at his reflection.

 

Chelsea was never really happy with his body. He had dark smatters of freckles all over his chest, nose and forearms (which he didn’t hate) but because his skin was so pale and milky, they stood out too much -- _especially_ on his chest. That skin was largely hairless aside from the light brown fuzz along his legs and the ginger-brown tuffs of pubic hair around his cock. His feet were too thin and long (his toes may as well have been French fries topped with marmite) and there was an ironing board where his arse should have been. A guy online once told him that that was good for sex – that it was easier for a cock to go deep inside a flat arse – but it wasn’t very pretty to look at. He wasn’t gaining any muscle anywhere. His eyes were green but they were such a **dark** green that they may as well have been black and his lips weren’t kissable – they were colour of turkey flesh and far too thin.

 

The only thing he REALLY liked about his body was his hair.

 

It was huge and puffy and curly, the sort that more ought to be growing out of a mixed race girl’s scalp than a white lad’s. He’d been growing it out for a while now and loved how it looked no matter what he did with it. It looked cute if ponytailed and beautiful when left loose. It looked sexy when it was wet, sticking to his skin in treacly black tresses. Chelsea loved his hair. The only thing that mattered was keeping it long.

 

A slightly younger, much dumber version of Chelsea Rice once took pictures of himself (naked like this) and posted them on Tumblr. ‘Taffy Trap’ he called himself. Sometimes he spent hours finding the right angles for some coquettish pose to post and comment, “Just a quick pic for ya”. Was it worth it? For 500+ likes, 40+ “you’re so stunning, Taffy” comments and 20+ private messages along the lines of “I wanna fuck your fucking brains out, you sexy slut”, it was at the time. It only stopped being worth it when some weirdo hacked his e-mails and threatened to come to his house.

 

Still. Feeling wanted was nice.

 

Chelsea thought about Jonno for a moment. His cock wobbled, threatening to get stiff. But he only blushed and ignored the temptation to touch himself, more out of defiance than willpower. That walking arsehole wasn’t worth one fucking drop of spilt cum. No. Chelsea cleared his mind with a deep breath then went back into his room, opened up his drawers, slipped on a fresh pair of pants as well as the bottoms and top of some red PJs. He shut off the light and crawled beneath his bed covers. A few minutes later he drifted off.

 

So he didn’t notice the chill that crept through the air.

 

A sliver of ice it was like, moving through the room despite the locked doors and windows, passing over Chelsea’s half-slumbering body. If he were awake, he might have felt the goose bumps prickling across his skin or the hair up his legs standing on end, one after the other, like little soldiers saluting a corporal. But he slept on in some captivating dream involving Jonno and himself on a sandy beach doing things to each other his girlfriend would never condone. He was so deeply lost in that dream that he didn’t notice his blanket turning itself upright from one of its corners and slowly hoisting itself into the air until it threw it itself off the bed.

 

Chelsea felt the loss in a chill and turned over.

 

But he was still lost in his dreams. A cool touch only made him sigh.

 

If he were awake, he might think someone’s fingers had just tenderly caressed his cheek.

 

If he were awake, he might have noticed those same ‘fingers’ take his maroon-coloured pyjama bottoms by their ankles and carefully pull them down his legs. He might have noticed the same being done with his pants. He might have noticed the sensation of a ‘mouth’ closing around his penis and sucking it.

 

Chelsea moaned in his sleep.

 

Absently. Unaware. His mind did not realize what was being done to his body because what was being done to his body was too similar to what was occurring in his dreams. But dreams could not stop his body from reacting without permission to the unbridled pleasure it was being subjected to. Chelsea’s toes curled, his back arched and little sighs of pleasure escaped his lips. In the waking world he would have cried out in bliss. In his dreams he was ravaged by Jonno. But the pleasure… it was no dream. And ‘ **It** ’…

 

… **It** was not Jonno.

 

**********

 

“Fuck you, Jonno,” that was what Chelsea whispered to himself when he woke up the next morning and saw the state the lower half of his body was in… i.e. covered in cum. It crusted over during the night and it was _everywhere_. All over his cock and balls and his peachy fuzz pubes, all down the sides of his legs, all over the bottom half of his pyjama tops, all over his bedding in wet patches. His pyjama bottoms were down his ankles and his duvet was hanging off the back of his desk chair. Chelsea barely remembered half of his dream but it must have been a banger for him to do this to himself in his sleep. And so much cum! You’d think he hadn’t touched himself in a week (which wouldn’t be true: just two days ago he’d fapped to an MKV of Rocco Steele pumping Aaron Aurora cock-first into a leather sofa).

 

_Fuck you_ _Jonno_ , he thought again. _Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!_ Embarrassed (and half-worried Tom or Margaret might walk in on him like this) Chelsea lumbered out of bed into the bathroom to clean himself up.

 

After showering and dressing, packing his textbooks and pencil case, Chelsea went down to a breakfast plate of scrambled eggs, streaky bacon, half an orange and a bistro glass full of Nescafe gold blend. Tom sat with a plate of his own but his mother was nowhere to be seen.

 

“Before you ask, your mother’s gone to work early,” Tom said. “Did we keep you up?”

 

“No,” said Chelsea.

 

“Good. Listen, your Grandma called this morning. She wants us to go see her up in Nottingham this week. Your mother doesn’t particularly want to go but the company will do her good and we both agreed that you’re old enough and mature enough to be here on your own.”

 

_They’re leaving me alone for the weekend?_ “O-okay.”

 

If he had friends it would have been the perfect opportunity for a house party. But Tom and Margaret knew better – Chelsea wouldn’t spend his weekends any differently than he already did – except maybe ordering an extra takeaway or two.

 

“Eat up. I’m making a move after this.”

 

The boy nodded. “Okay.”

 

“I left your packet lunch in the fridge so don’t forget to take it,” Tom’s tone was short. He wasn’t the type to blame his kids for his arguments (and Chelsea knew better to blame himself for what went on between Tom and Margaret) but he _was_ what they were arguing about. But what was he supposed to do? Lie to them and pretend Nancy was dead? Again? Why did he have to feel guilty about not wanting to lie? Why did-

 

“By the way there was a package for you yesterday,” Tom said. He handed Chelsea a small, rectangular parcel in wrapped in tape and string -- which was odd because he wasn’t expecting anything from Amazon or eBay or the like.

 

When nothing was left of his plate but ketchup smears, Tom dropped it into the sink then grabbed his coat and car keys from the corridor. He gave his son some simple instructions (do the dishes, turn off the heating, and lock the door) then left for work. Chelsea was immediately curious about the parcel. What was it? The second Tom was gone he climbed onto the sofa and unpackaged it. It was a book.

 

A burnt book.

 

The cover and binding were charred black, some of its pages were so singed they crumpled to ash the instant he turned one. There was no title and the pages were so blackened he couldn’t make out any of the writing. There were some odd symbols that were just about legible though – pentagrams and some chicken scratch attempt at… algorithms maybe? But that was all.

 

_What the hell?_ The boy thought. _Why would someone send me a burnt book?_ Seemed like the sort of dumb joke Jonno would make – but what was the punchline supposed to be? Either way Chelsea was about ready to toss it – until something fell out from inside the cover. Chelsea took it up. It was a piece of paper with two addresses handwritten on either side, but when Chelsea Googled both on his Note 4. _Is someone fucking with me?_ He thought. Because the first was to an address that did not exist anywhere online and the second was to a bloody CEX! Did his prankster try to leave him an invitation and get confused? The boy sighed. He just didn’t _get_ people sometimes. Why would someone go to so much trouble just to send him nonsense? Whose idea of fun was this?

 

Maybe he would find out.


	3. Don't I Deserve A Reward?

The 185 was halfway up Vauxhall Bridge at the time. He was listening to Track 05 – Ordinary Vanity, sipping a skinny latte fresh from Costa, and just starting off with _The Witchcraft of Ulua_ (so needless to say he was already in a passably good mood) when Leo Cutter and Ahmed Mehdi came up the stairs with rucksacks slung over their shoulders. Chelsea noticed them but they didn’t notice him (so no slaps to the head or ‘bum boy’ jokes) as they jumped on two seats closest to the stairs. Two seats away. At the time the bus was half-full so Chelsea just kept his head down, thinking to avoid them, that was until they started talking.

“Bruv, I texted him on What’s App last night but he didn’t text me back,” said Ahmed. “Mr. Jones try yell at me and say “Oh, why ain’t Jonno here for practice?” blah, blah, blah. I said “I’m not the boy’s keeper, mate, I don’t know why he ain’t here, innit?” Man try chat to me like he’s my dad, bruv!”

Leo took a fist to his mouth to keep from laughing. “Fam, you ain’t seen Riya’s Snapchat?”

“Nah mate, why?”

“Last night I was BUSSIN’, blood! Literally yeah, she was all like “fuck guys who don’t support you, fuck guys that take you for granted, fuck guys that don’t text back” and I’m dying! Bruv, I had tears in my eyes! Then I text Jonno and I say to him like “why is Riya fucking blowing up her Snapchat with this fucking feminist shit?” and he’s like “fuck her, I don’t give a shit no more, I couldn’t catch brain for week, she’s a cunt” reh, reh, reh!” Leo broke into hysterical, ashy laughter. “They broke up, bruv!”

“Swear down?”

“Swear DOWN, fam!”

Jonno and Riya were broken up.

If anything was wider than Chelsea’s eyes at that news, it was his smile. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t argued before (they sure as hell had and it was always the talk of the school when it happened) but not once had they ever broken up. Their fights only usually lasted about half a day! But he knew Leo wasn’t lying. When the two of them got dunked the first thing Jonno did was argue with the people laughing at him – not see to his crying girl. He was such a fucking meathead he probably didn’t even think her crying was that a big of a deal. Chelsea almost pictured his indifferent coldness – “why are you upset with me, I didn’t drop the fucking paint on you,” and Riya was a lot of things but more than anything else she was haughty. She wouldn’t stand for it. Lots of boys liked Riya, she knew she had options. And Jonno wouldn’t have realized what he had done until it was too late.

Grinning, Chelsea felt like a hungry wolf just thrown a pork chop. Sweeter news couldn’t have graced his morning like that did.

Or so he thought.

When the bus crossed the bridge Chelsea (distantly) followed Leo and Ahmed down its stairs and off it onto the streets. The first bell rang as soon as they walked into the College and as usual Chelsea attended his tutor group for the register. As usual for a Tuesday he had Maths first, then first break, then IT, then Geography with Mrs. O’Neil. That was the one lesson he dreaded and he walked into the classroom with a knot in his stomach (wondering what cruel and unusual excuse she would find to humiliate him in front of the class again) but Mrs. O’Neil wasn’t there. In her place was a cover teacher called Mr. Smeat; a gangly bald man with a sprinkle of ginger fuzz around his lips and humble attitude. He was nice. Chelsea remembered him from when he took over Miss Kaczka’s History class during her maternity leave.

Someone else asked him why Mrs. O’Neil wasn’t teaching the class.

“Well Mrs. O’Neil is very unwell right now,” explained Mr. Smeat. “She had an allergic reaction to something she ate yesterday so I’m here to cover for her. Now! Everyone take a seat! Let’s turn to page 228 and resume where you left off yesterday with… plate tectonics.”

If ever a day was a slice of cake.

And the cherry on top?

Jonno and Riya.

The rugby captain had his usual spot (one desk away from Chelsea’s) but Riya chose to sit at the front with her friend Sarah Fitzpatrick. Jonno’s glare could’ve burned a hole in the back of Riya’s head but the girl didn’t look back. They shared no texts nor giggles and at the lesson’s end they left as separately as they came. Jonno didn’t try to catch up with her and Riya didn’t bother looking back. It was official. They were well and truly done.

_Payback’s a fucking bitch,_ concluded a grinning Chelsea.

**********

‘Hi Dad. Will be stopping at the library for a few hours after-school. Please tell Mum to save me a plate. Thanks.’

That was the text Chelsea sent to Tom after leaving college. The final lesson was Spanish (a subject he had always done well at) but when the last bell went he packed his things away and ducked out as soon as possible. Part of it was some slim hope of bumping into Jonno, sans Riya, on his way out. But as he left the languages department and strode down the main hall and through the courtyard and out via the Damilola Taylor Gate, the Pimlico Manor College rugby captain was nowhere to be found. He saw Riya though. Her father (Dr. Malhotra) waited for her in his silver Mercedes. She said goodbye to her friends then climbed in with a dispassionate face. Then they drove off.

But then Chelsea’s thoughts were elsewhere. _Maybe he’s gone to rugby practice._ If what Ahmed said this morning was true, then he missed it yesterday. Truth be told Chelsea was sort of tempted to go and see him – but he had no idea what he really wanted to say. It wouldn’t be “Ha, ha! She dumped you!” because that would likely result in a beating. It wouldn’t be sympathetic either. Chelsea had no interest in coddling or consoling Jonno. But he did want to be around him right now -- just to see if anything, _anything_ , had changed (even though deep down he knew nothing would).

But temptation didn’t breed reaction and Chelsea left instead. But he left to do something he decided to do earlier that morning.

He took the 436 instead of the 185 and rode it through the bridgework and pubs of Vauxhall, past the Oval and the rowdy student populace of Archbishop Tenison’s, down through the run down chicken shops and kebab joints of Camberwell then past the Nigerian shanty town that was Peckham. When he got off at New Cross Gate station he descended to Platform 2 and got a train straight to Purley. On his way there he took the burnt book out of his satchel and stared at it.

If someone sent him a package like this four years ago he would have thought Nancy was behind it. He would have imagined her lost somewhere and sending him clues to come and find her. But now? Now he was clever enough not to believe in trails of breadcrumbs. He was beyond wishful thinking. Wherever she was she would never do _this_. This was someone messing with him. But why? And why now? Chelsea knew it wasn’t Jonno (he was the kind of arsehole who liked to see his torments in real time, which was a crazy sort of relief in its own way) but it still bothered him. It bothered him enough to drag himself off at Purley station and make his way up the high street to its CEX.

It was much like any other CEX; tablets and phones in the windows; games, Blu-Rays and DVDs inside; an atmosphere soaked in BO with some dumb Year 7 lads bickering over who of them was better at FIFA and a mum bickering with a shaggy-looking staff member about why her son’s PS3 games were worth so little in trade. That unfortunate guy had a co-worker behind the counter dealing with everyone else while he calmed her down. Chelsea went into her queue with the burned book in his hand – but once he was next she didn’t seem to notice it. “Hi, can I help?” She said.

“Uh,” _Who sent me this book?_ He thought. _Was it you? I don’t know you, any of you, why would you play games with me?_ “Do you have… any PS Vita memory cards?”

When she turned around to check the stock suspended from the wall Chelsea began to realize that he had no plan here. He didn’t even know what he expected? For his prankster to leap out and yell “surprise! It was me!” and then job done?

“Which size were you looking for?” Said the woman.

Chelsea’s felt his wrist tremble. He snatched it with the other to calm it down but that trembled too. Then he realized it was his whole body – shaking. Someone here was fucking with him. Playing games with his mind and (whether they realized it or not) Nancy’s memory. How was that fair? And why couldn’t he just ask these people what the hell one of them was playing at?

“64 GB?” He said.

_Why am I such a coward?_ He thought.

She shook her head. “I’m sorry but we don’t have any of those in stock at the moment. The bigger ones tend to sell out more quickly, I’m afraid. Try online.”

“That’s fine. Thank you.”

The burnt book was still in hand. Chelsea slipped it into his satchel and walked outside where he threw his face in his hands. What was wrong with him? What was the point of coming all this way if he wasn’t even going to do anything?

“Mate, hold up a second.”

Chelsea turned.

There was a guy behind him. He was middling-to-tall with heavy-lidded eyes and a feint tan, his thin black hair fell below his ears to where an unshorn black beard ate his sleepy expression alive. He wore Adidas shoes, shorn black denims and a slim fit ‘classic Iron Man’ t-shirt. And he loved his ink – the guy had tattoos of Celtic crosses all over his body (two small ones up either of his wrists, two larger ones up both of his forearms, and the point of a large one poking out above his neckline). 

“Hey, did you say you were looking for a PS Vita memory card?”

_As an excuse not to say what I really wanted to say_ , “Y-yeah.”

“I’m going to be the worst employee ever and tell you not to buy them from here because we screw you on them. But I can get you a good deal. I’ve got an online shop through EBay. Give me your number and I’ll text you the URL.”

Chelsea blinked. “Um…”

“Maybe I should’ve led with my name,” he stuck his hand out for a shake. “I’m Parker. Parker Fryer. And maybe I do it this way,” he fished his IPhone out of his pocket, “Take mine and if you fancy a good deal on the memory card sometime, text me. How about that?”

**********

_Berumbaal._

_The fables did not do it justice._

_The boy-exile beheld it from a ridge off of the Dragon’s Point. From that great height he could see the city in its entirety, from north to south and east to west. Fortresses guarded its compass points and each one stood interlocked by towering limestone walls encircling the city’s expanse. The city itself was a stone sprawl of cobbled streets and two-tier tenements, open air markets, watchtowers, rigged wells. Amongst its populace were the Guardsmen. They were Berumbaal’s protectors, patrolling the streets from dawn to dawn, famed throughout the world for their magically-forged spears and distinctive black-gold tabards. And the temples! There were hundreds of them across the city, noticeable by their unusual flame-shaped rooves and the reverent statues of Agaroth (some in marble, some in stone, some in wood) that accompanied them. In Berumbaal Agaroth was less a man than he was a god, worshipped by the people and loved as their leader. Once upon a time the sorcerer pledged fealty to his father… but the boy-exile knew that Berumbaal followed no one but its ruler. Hence its neutrality during the King’s Fall._

_And in the centre of it all was Agaroth’s palace – The Throne of Heaven._

_The Throne pre-existed Berumbaal by thousands of years. It was once the seat of a more ancient line of the God King Emperors (before they spread their influence south and east, and before the War of the Ancients cut their ties to the north). It was said that inside the Throne’s golden halls the spirits of the dead gods yet lived, whispering their wisdom and madness into the ears of anyone worthy enough to hear them. It was sacred ground. Only Agaroth had the courage (or the temerity) to make such holy ground his seat of power._

_The boy-exile sighed._

_Agaroth was close._

_He could have spent the night staring out over the city of his future husband but he had preparations to make. He returned to camp. Skewered snapper fish turned black over a cooking pit whilst his guards held the perimeter and tended to the oxen (and his uncle servant the horses) whilst a special guest sat with them in chains – Lord Gharlin. Former Lord Gharlin._

_The boy-exile tilted the fat man’s jowly head up with a fingertip. “Awake?”_

_“Y-yes…” Blood slopped out of Gharlin’s mouth as he spoke. His wounds were not fatal (merely broken bones and bruises) though if it had been up to his uncle servant Gharlin’s fate would have been far worse. As it happened the boy-exile still had a use for him._

_“The Bog of Tur is miles behind us – and your men with it. If you follow my instructions I will allow you to return to them and fight out your petty bandit wars for as long as you care to. I’ll even send you on your way with a horse and a purse full of gold. Does that sound fair?”_

_Gharlin nodded yes._

_“Will you help me then?”_

_Gharlin nodded yes._

_“Good,” said the boy-exile. “You’re going to get me inside the Throne of Heaven.”_

Chelsea saved the update. 

He spent the morning thinking up how to spare the boy-exile the fate of Gharlin’s cock and settled for his ‘bandit attack’ idea. He pictured them as pale-skinned, crazy, tattooed and dreadlocked climbing over the bulwark from the south side with falchions and battle axes. Gharlin would get up and call his man-at-arms to sound the bell, meanwhile the boy-exile convinced the toll keeper to let his caravan inside (“I beg of you, Lord Gharlin, when this is over take anything you want, even my maidenhead, it’s yours! But spare my uncle and guards!”). During the confusion of the battle he re-joined his party and escaped with them through an unguarded (and un-attacked) gate further down the wall. He was bit unsure if that was a satisfying way to end that chapter but at least it provided a bit of action.

Happy with that, Chelsea leaned back in his desk chair and yawned. He wasn’t tired but it was late (almost midnight) and he had one last day of school left before the end of the week. The boy shut off his computer, took a quick hot shower, dried himself off then slipped on some PJs and climbed into bed.

_This weekend’s going to be great_ , thought Chelsea as he nuzzled his cheek against the pillow.

Tom and Margaret left for Nottingham barely an hour after he came home from college and they wouldn’t be back until Monday. Truth be told he was excited to be alone. He rarely had the house to himself and if he ever did it was only for a few hours. This was probably the first time he had ever had the whole house to himself (for three days!) and already he loved it. It was so nice. No Margaret yelling at Phil Mitchell from her sofa, no Tom practicing guitar out in the garden. Just peace and quiet. The whole house was so full of silence all the little sounds were magnified; the tick and tock of his mother’s grandfather clock, the hum of his PC, the odd passing car down the road. Chelsea found it so soothing he fell asleep.

Then he heard a knock.

The silence made a gunshot of it. A shot so loud Chelsea almost jumped out of his bed. His eyes wandered to his alarm clock (12:03) and then to the door. Silence. _Did someone knock the front door?_ he wondered. But it was too loud for that. And who would be knocking at this time of night? Chelsea stared at the door. There was no light at the threshold. No one was out there. He was on his own in the house. Completely alone.

And yet, for some stupid reason, Chelsea felt the need to make sure. The boy pulled up his covers and set his naked feet down. Because the light fixture was next to the door frame he padded across his room in darkness. He had nothing to see by except the blinking glare of a street lamp near his window. Chelsea approached the door but when his hand found the door knob he stopped. A chill struck the room. Even though its windows were shut.

Chelsea shivered.

_What am I afraid of?_ He thought. _I’m on my own._

Chelsea opened the door.

There was no one outside it.

The boy sighed. _What is wrong with me?_ He thought. It occurred to him then that maybe he was scared to be alone without knowing it. That ‘knock’ was probably just a trick his mind played on itself. It could have even been one of the water pipes – the boiler was rickety enough. What was he really expecting? Leatherface? Freddy Krueger? Jason? Shao Khan?

Chelsea giggled at himself.

All of a sudden he felt stupid. Better to just get some sleep and wake up nice and early tomorrow to enjoy his freedom. Before that though he just needed to go for a quick pee. Chelsea opened his bathroom door and flicked the light on. The mirror above his sink was still foggy from his shower. And there he saw it.

**DON’T I DESERVE A REWARD?**

The question was carved into the condensation in jagged letters like the misshapen work of a palsied fingertip. Chelsea stared at the question. Dumbfounded, stupefied. And then he ran. Like a boy possessed he ran out of his bathroom and towards his bedroom door – right before it _slammed_ itself shut with teeth-rattling impact. And as if to stamp an exclamation mark on the fact, the bathroom door slammed itself shut too. Chelsea jumped at both sounds and then ran for the door again. His hands caught the knob but no matter how he twisted it, left or right, the door would not open. How could it be locked from the _outside_?

And then **it** grabbed him.

To Chelsea it didn’t feel like a snatch so much as it did a push – one that catapulted him off his bare feet and sent him backwards across his bedroom until his ankles caught the foot bar with a fleshy thud and threw him back first onto his bed.

Chelsea tried to bring up his head and see what was going on but **it** pressed his head down into the bedding. He struggled hard to pull up the rest of his body, first his arms then his back then his legs, but they wouldn’t move. Or… rather he could move his limbs but **it** bore down on his whole body – and refused to let him up. A frightened Chelsea then became _horrified_ as **it** pulled open his pyjama tops one button at a time. Then **it** ripped them open. Bone white buttons went flying into the air as either side of his shirt fell to his sides. His nipples went stiff with cold and his sparse muscles glinted with sweat as he squirmed under the blinking street light. From where he was held the boy watched his own chest rise and fall to a pounding heartbeat.

Then **it** took his top by its sleeves. As a result, Chelsea’s arms were suddenly pulled with them, left and right from his body like he was being crucified on his own bed. **It** began to pull at the sleeves. Chelsea felt the tension in the fabric beneath his back until it ripped in half – then both pieces were pulled off of his arms and hurled into the blackness.

With his arms free Chelsea tried to get up again but **it** caught both his wrists – God, he could feel that invisible cold strength around them like handcuffs – and pressed them into his pillow to hold him down. The coldness went down his exposed back like water. Then **it** went for Chelsea’s pyjama bottoms. **It** took them by the ankles and yanked them down his legs in one swift motion. The boy’s eyes watched them land on his computer monitor almost as if in slow-mo.

And then finally he found his voice.

Chelsea screamed. Louder than he ever had before. Louder than he even knew he could. So loudly it made his throat raw. He begged and screamed and pleaded into the darkness for help -- until **its** invisible hand shoved something white into his mouth (his wadded briefs) that blunted his screams into muffled vowels and snorts. It didn’t matter anyway. There was no one there to hear or help.

He was naked in the darkness.

**It** pushed Chelsea’s feet apart so wide that his ankles dangled off either side of the bed. With that and his wrists pinned together above his head his muscles were stretched taut – moving was almost impossible.

And then it started sucking him.

Chelsea’s eyes bugged out in horror. The light from the street lamp might have been faint but it was enough to see by – nobody was there! And yet somebody _, something,_ was holding him down from two points of his bed and wrapping what felt like a mouth around his cock. He was soft at that point. Sweat matted up his fuzzy ginger pubic hairs. But the boy looked over his chest and watched **it** pull his flaccid cock ‘upright’.

And then **it** sucked him.

The sensation was unmistakable. He couldn’t see it but he could _feel_ it. It was a mouth. A mouth that was tingling cold but also soft and somehow… tender. Then through the mire of fear and confusion (he had tears in his eyes he was so scared) something else found Chelsea in that dark moment.

Pleasure.

He sighed. His toes curled. His eyes rolled back into his head (which tilted back onto his pillow) as his _other_ head was consumed all the way down to its pubic bush by a wet sodden snatch. The sensation stiffened his cock against his will. Chelsea wriggled with a suddenly delicious frustration as all six inches of it were worked over, up and down, down and up, faster and faster, again and again and again until tension swelled inside his balls and threatened to spill over…

…but then it stopped.

Chelsea’s hard cock flopped onto his body with a wet slap. He released the breath he didn’t even realize he was holding. He opened his eyes. _W-why…?_ It was the only coherent thought his mind could muster at that point. But his confusion was short lived. Before Chelsea even had a chance to stop and catch his breath his whole body was turned (or better yet tossed) from back to belly. He landed with a thud. The impact was so hard and sudden that it almost winded him. The bed frame juddered. Then **it** took Chelsea’s wrists again, this time dragging them to his freckled shoulders and fixing them there, whilst **it** spread open the boy’s legs as wide as before. Then something hard and huge and cold pushed against the ring of his arsehole.

In the dreams of Chelsea Rice, his beloved and terribly hated Jonno was always like this. Forceful. Demanding. Unquenchable. But Jonno would be gentle with him in that first moment. Somehow, every time they fucked in the world of dreams, he always knew that Chelsea was a virgin.

But **it** didn’t seem to know.

**It** didn’t care.

There was no attempt at foreplay nor any presumption of preparation. One moment Chelsea was a virgin, the next he wasn’t. His arsehole’s little pink rosebud bloomed open like a flower and gave way against his will to the cock-shaped nothingness that plunged inside his hole and skewered him as deep as was physically possible. Even with his pants in his mouth, Chelsea’s helpless scream cut through the silence. **Its** penis felt much like **it’s** touch – cold and hard. Chelsea bit down upon his white fronts and struggled to adjust to **its** thickness. Sweat dribbled down his forehead as **it** allowed him to pull his legs up underneath his thighs and arch his back for some relief. Then **it** pulled out. The boy grunted hard. Then **it** thrust into him again. Chelsea cried out. He snatched bundles of bedding into his hands so tight his knuckles went white. He may as well have been holding on for dear life as **it** started fucking him.

And **it** was not gentle.

As soon as Chelsea felt **its** length and girth pull out maybe halfway from his arse **it** punched back in again so strong that the lower half of his body slammed the bed. Chelsea was utterly powerless to do anything as the thrusts evened out and picked up speed. If someone walked into his bedroom right at that moment it might have looked like he was just humping his bed awkwardly. But that was not the case. He was being _fucked_. He was being fucked so hard the bed was shaking. The head board banged the wall in riotous succession – _thump, thump, thump, thump, thumb, thump!_ – and his continuous muffled screams became a kind of desperate and sustained staccato moan. His body rocked back and forth. His loose hair tossed to and fro. Chelsea closed his eyes and groaned his way through his ravishment. He didn’t feel himself orgasm. He didn’t even know when it stopped. Time became a memory as he lost track of it and moments blended with other moments; his feet in the air or his face in a puddle of his own semen, all blurred into one.


	4. Poltergeist...?

As sunlight cascaded in through the undrawn curtains of his bedroom window Chelsea Rice woke up from the deepest sleep of his life. He groaned groggily and slowly leaned up. _What a crazy fucking dream_ , he thought. And then Chelsea saw himself. He was naked. Just like five nights ago his crotch and cock were covered in cum crust. There was light bruising where his wrists and ankles were held, his bed sheets were soggy with sweat and semen, his pyjama bottoms were still hanging from the computer and his shredded pyjama tops were in two places at once. Worst of all was the burning ache inside his butt.

 

_It wasn’t a dream_ , he thought in horror. _Oh God, it wasn’t a dream_.

 

Right there and then Chelsea didn’t give one earthly damn if he was naked or not, he bolted for the door. His legs buckled beneath him for a moment (him not realizing how weak they still were after his ordeal) but he flung open the door and ran down the landing into Tom and Margaret’s room and slammed that door shut behind him.

 

He breathed in gasps.

 

_What the hell?_ Chelsea looked at his hands. They were shaking. _What the hell is going on here?_

 

The boy slumped against the door as his mind raced to try to come to grips with whatever it was that was going on. It wasn’t a dream (he knew that much by his fucked up clothes). Whatever happened last night actually happened. So did someone break into his room? But how? He made sure all the doors were locked and all the windows were closed when Tom and Margaret left for Nottingham. _But someone fucked me_. That fiery pain in his arsehole was proof enough. Chelsea tried picturing the man who did this to him and saw nothing. _But it had to be a man_ , he thought. _Some person_. But there was no one. No face, no torso, no arms, no legs, not even a cock. He remembered nothing of his attacker. He knew why though. His conscious mind couldn’t fathom it but he _knew_ why. **It** wasn’t Jonno come to ravish him in his dreams again. **It** was someone one else. Or rather… _something_ else.

 

There was something in his room.

 

Tom was the first person that came to mind. But even if Chelsea called him, what would he say? _‘Dad, please come home, something attacked me in the middle of the night?’_ He automatically pictured Margaret in the background of that conversation warning him not to fall for a practical joke. _‘Now that we’re gone he’s just looking for attention, Thomas! I’ve warned you to stop coddling him, this is why!’_ His parents were no help to him. Even so he felt safer in their room than he did in his own. Chelsea exhaled. _Have to calm down_ , he told himself. _Have to think clearly_. First things first – getting cleaned up. His parent’s bedroom also had a bathroom attachment so he quickly went inside and took a shower. He felt so dirty he just had to get clean. Shaking, Chelsea used some of Tom’s shower gel (even though he hated the smell) and Margaret’s coconut and lychee shampoo. There was some Body Shop soap lying around. With that and a sponge he scrubbed his skin clean then dried himself up with a towel. Then he turned to the mirror.

DON’T BE AFRAID, CHELSEA.

Another message in the steam! The boy screamed and ran out of both the bathroom and the bedroom until he was outside on the landing again. He grabbed the bannister and whimpered. “It’s not just my room,” he said aloud. “It’s the whole house.”

 

Then **it** took his hand.

 

He looked down. His hand was just there holding onto the railing. Nothing was there! But he felt **it**. A hand holding his hand; the cold touch of a palm brushing his knuckles, thicker fingers lacing with his thinner ones. Chelsea’s body shivered when a second hand brushed his hip and slowly traced **its** way up his still wet skin.

 

**_It’s_** _behind me_ , thought Chelsea _. **It’s** …_

 

He had to get out of there! Chelsea ran back into his bedroom. He didn’t care that none of his shirts or trousers had been ironed yet he just grabbed the first ones he saw, a pair of socks, some briefs, his shoes, his school bag and his phone. He ran back out and down the stairs and got changed as soon as possible – then he ran out and locked the door behind him.

 

**********

 

College passed him by as a dull haze that day.

 

He arrived into a school full of black shadows whizzing around him at speed. Their words were tinnitus. Chelsea tried to pay attention during class but when he looked at his textbooks all the letters were scrambled. A was X and E was Z and I was Q and O was P and U was V. If he stared too hard at them the letters leapt upright and marched across the page for him. It hurt to sit down and his wrists were still sore. At some point that morning, a teacher asked him if he was ‘alright’. Chelsea couldn’t even recall who it was (it might have been Mrs. O’Neil for all he knew) but he remembered telling them “yes” and walking away.

 

None of it stopped until he snuck into the toilets and took a few co-codamol. After that his head cleared (even if only a little bit) and he decided to spend his lunchbreak in the library.

 

Pimlico Manor College’s library was dissected into three portions. One was the library proper which contained row after row of lockable glass bookcases for its hundreds and hundreds of books. The second was a reading area with six long reading tables for group projects and a separate thirty smaller ones for private reading. The third section was the computer room. Fifteen Windows 7 equipped Compaq PCs arrayed in three columns of five with a shared printer between them at the front desk. There was some (severely restricted) internet access. After reluctantly eating the remaining half of a cold steak bake he bought from Greggs that morning, Chelsea asked the librarian, Ms. Whitley, for some time on a computer.

 

“You can take No. 7,” she said.

 

So the boy sat down, shrugged off his satchel and blazer, then opened up Firefox on the desktop and Googled the term ‘Poltergeists’. Un-ironically the first link he clicked on was the Wikipedia one.

“In folklore and parapsychology, a poltergeist (German for "noisy ghost") is a type of ghost or other supernatural entity which is responsible for physical disturbances, such as loud noises and objects being moved or destroyed. They are purportedly capable of pinching, biting, hitting, and tripping people. Most accounts of poltergeists describe the movement or levitation of objects such as furniture and cutlery, or noises such as knocking on doors. They have traditionally been described as troublesome spirits who haunt a particular person instead of a specific location. Such alleged poltergeist manifestations have been reported in many cultures and countries including the United States, India‚ Japan, Brazil, Australia, and most European nations. Early accounts date back to the 1st century.”

 

Chelsea was born in the late nineties. He was a millennial. He didn’t believe in God. He didn’t pray (not even when Nancy disappeared). He had probably spent less time in a church than he had watching YouTube videos of Christopher Hitchens eviscerating religious belief. For Chelsea the supernatural was what it was -- a thing of fiction.

 

But how else to explain last night’s events? Or this morning?

 

No matter how hard he tried to think rationally of the whole thing his explanations fell flat. He _had_ to be alone in the house last night – but for the sake of self-argument, or of contrarianism, he reasoned _what if I wasn’t_? What if his invisible incubus was actually a burglar in the night and it was too dark to see him properly – how did he get inside when all the doors were locked and none of the windows were broken? Why was nothing stolen? And if he wasn’t a burglar (just a horny predator) why bother fingering messages into foggy mirrors? Why bother playing mind games when your only intention is to fuck someone? And if the man who wrote the message in the evening also wrote the one in the morning, that meant he probably spent the night inside the house. Where was he hiding the whole time? Under the bed?

 

Every time Chelsea tried to picture what happened last night his memory fogged. But he recalled some things quite well. He recalled seeing a message in his bathroom mirror and then running for his bedroom door – that shut itself from the _outside_. How could anyone shut the door from the _outside_ and get back inside seconds later? Why didn’t he remember anything about his attacker? Suppose it was just difficult to see in the darkness – surely Chelsea might remember hearing or smelling something off the guy?  There were no hard grunts or strangled orgasmic cries, no beer and cigarettes on a horny breath, no growling voice warning him to ‘keep his mouth shut or else’, no nothing. That just didn’t make sense. Thinking this was rational was _irrational_. Chelsea Rice had been fucked last night -- and there was no doubt in his mind that he was fucked by a ‘what’ not a ‘who’.

 

Those were the things he thought about in the library. Later on in the day, and even later on his way home, he wondered about other things. Like what did **it** mean when **it** said “DON’T I DESERVE A REWARD?”

_A reward for what?_ Chelsea thought.

 

And then it hit him.

 

All the weird things that had been happening recently – Jonno and Riya getting slapped in paint, Mrs. O’Neil getting sick, that stupid burnt book and the nonsense addresses, his parents suddenly called away to Nottingham – what if that was all down to **it**?

 

**********

 

Chelsea came home to an empty house. When he fished his keys out of his satchel and unlocked the door (half surprised that he remembered to lock it this morning) the silence was louder than anything he had ever heard. Everything was in order. No signs of entry, nothing broken, nothing stolen. The boiler was on timer so it was warm. Everything was the way he left it. Even so, Chelsea was nervous. He did a good chunk of his growing up in that house and knew the history behind each of its little quirks; the dent in the bannister, the slight crack in the garden window, the stains on his Mom’s leather chair and so on; but for the first time in his life Chelsea felt scared in his own home.

**It** was here.

 

The boy couldn’t say how he knew. He merely did. He _knew_. It was almost like a sense, like a tingling in the air; unobservable but _present_ and alarmingly so. Sighing, he went into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of orange juice. There was some left over beef casserole (and some potatoes and a side salad to go with it) so Chelsea put some in a Pyrex dish and left it in the oven to slow cook. Halfway between that and checking to make sure all the downstairs windows and doors were still locked he realized he was just avoiding the inevitable.

_Come on, Chelsea,_ he thought to himself. _You can do it._

 

He dragged himself up the stairs to his bedroom. But before he opened the door he took his phone out and set the camera to record. Then he left the lens facing his bedroom door and went inside.

 

Everything here was as he left it – a mess. His red chequered pyjama top was in two pieces and the bottoms were hanging off his monitor. His white fronts were in a soggy wad below his coffee table and his bed was in a right state. The duvet was in a misshapen bundle on the floor and his now malformed bedding was stained with semen in at least two places. Compared to other kid’s bedrooms it probably wasn’t that untidy but to Chelsea it was an absolute mess. Nothing told the last night’s tale better than the state of his room then.

 

Scared yet somehow resilient, he tidied it up. He took off his satchel and blazer and went to work. First he binned his pyjamas (one was useless without the other) then he pulled off his sheets and made the bed up with some fresh ones. After that he put the bedding and his boxers in his clothes hamper with the intention of washing them later on. He turned on his PC then went through his emails. There was a few about _The Seventeen Man-Brides of Agaroth_ so Chelsea made a note to proof read and post the new chapter as soon as possible. Once that was done he unpacked his satchel and opened the window for a little bit of fresh air.

_Come on_ , thought Chelsea to himself. _You can do it._

 

He had a plan, you see.

 

The door was still open. The boy walked over, shut it, then sat down in front of it. He must have looked like a punished schoolboy forced to face the wall after talking back to the teacher. Instead he wanted to talk to the being that stole his virginity.

 

Chelsea swallowed the lump in his throat and said, “Are you there? I want to ask you some questions. Please knock the door once for yes and twice for no. Okay?”

 

From the outside – **it** knocked the door once.

 

Chelsea jumped.

 

His morbidly quiet room made the sound thrice as loud. He had no television and there was no traffic outside. There was nothing to confuse it with. It was definitely a knock. Somewhere in the back of his mind Chelsea asked himself if he was finally going insane, if life had finally pushed too many buttons and just decided to shove him on the crazy train once and for all. Was he _really_ about to have a conversation with a supernatural being? But how could there be any peace for him if he didn’t?

 

“Are you human?” He asked.

 

Two knocks.

 

A chill went down Chelsea’s spine. “Have you ever been human?”

 

One knock.

_Poltergeist_ , thought Chelsea. “Do you have a name?”

 

One knock.

 

If they were ever to have further ‘conversations’ Chelsea decided they would have to find a way to have **it** communicate that name to him. “How long have you been here? One day?”

 

Two knocks.

 

“One week?”

 

Two knocks.

 

“…One year…?”

 

Two knocks.

 

“More than one year?”

 

One knock.

 

His chills became shivers. More than a year? How long had **it** had been lurking in his bedroom? Chelsea thought back on all the things he’d done inside there that no one else in the world knew. His first kiss. The first time he smoked a cigarette. The first time he smoked weed. The first time he posed nude as ‘Taffy Trap’ for Tumblr. Masturbating for the umpteenth time to the Jonny Ryder scene in _Chavs Vs Skaters_ and crying himself to sleep the night Jonno first beat him up. The night he took out a razor and _genuinely_ thought about ending it. Something was watching him the entire time?

 

“Have you been… watching me?”

 

One knock.

_But then why now?_ Chelsea thought. _Why finally start making contact NOW of all times?_

 

“Do you… do you like me?”

 

One knock – somehow slower and harder than the others.

 

The room grew cold.

 

Chelsea bit his lip. He knew the answer to his next question before he even worked up the nerve to ask it; “What you did to me last night… are you going to do it again…?”

 

One knock.

 

It was in Chelsea’s mind to ask **it** “when?” (knowing full well **it** could not reply) but it was sooner than he thought. Much sooner. Once again the air around him went cold. It wasn’t like a breeze – more like a sudden temperature drop _around_ his body rather than _in_ it. He remembered the sensation well. That meant **it** was here. Chelsea’s lips were still sore from last night, from when **it** pulled off his white fronts and shoved them into his mouth to silence his screams. He didn’t mean to close his eyes. Half the point of making contact with **it** was to prove that he could not see what he ought to have seen, that this was beyond reality as he knew it. Yet he closed his eyes all the same. And then he felt himself being kissed. **It** kissed himself softly at first, a tiny little peck on the lips just gently nudging Chelsea’s head back, just to see if he would run away again. He didn’t.

 

Chelsea opened his eyes again.

 

They saw nothing.

 

But **it** was there.

 

And **it** kissed him again.

 

Harder this time. More firmly. Something like a tongue pierced open Chelsea’s lips and pushed its way into his mouth, making him moan. He had only ever been kissed twice before that. Once was by a girl called Abby Danemouth, a brief friend he made (accidentally) in college last year. Back then he was in an afterschool film club with her. After a viewing of _The Ring_ (1998) they got to talking and texting. They had some stuff in common. Weeks later she invited herself back to Chelsea’s place to admit that she fancied him. And she kissed him. Most boys would’ve turned that into their first time but Chelsea felt nothing. They didn’t speak to each other again after that night.

 

That was his second kiss.

 

His first (and up until that moment his best) was back in secondary school. At the time it all happened so fast and time had muddled his memory of it all (especially since Nancy’s disappearance was so fresh on his mind at the time) but what he remembered _clearly_ was being given a detention that day for talking back to his science teacher. It was late (and dark out) and around 6pm maybe, but at the time they still lived in North London so home was just a ten-minute walk away. All he wanted was go for a quick pee before he left school. But when he went to the toilets, without any kind of warning what so ever, a Year 11 boy followed him inside and pushed him into one of the stalls. Chelsea was so utterly scared that he didn’t even fight back. He remembered the boy saying something like, “Stop fucking ignoring me,” as he shoved Chelsea against the wall, grabbed his face and then shoved his tongue down his throat. Up until last night it was simultaneously one of the most frightening and sexy moments of his life -- he remembered them moaning together and how the boy’s hard on poked at his little belly. It was a moment that could have gone on forever – but then all of a sudden it didn’t. It ended. And the boy glared -- not at Chelsea but _through_ him -- like some traumatized soldier. Then he ran out of stall in disgust with himself.

 

Chelsea didn’t remember much about that boy. He was tall (but then everyone in Year 11 seems tall when you’re in Year 8) and black. That was all he knew. He didn’t even know his name. Chelsea saw him again a few times after that but they never spoke, both of them too scared to acknowledge what had happened, and a year later he was gone, off to college, leaving Chelsea to deal with the fallout from the nuke that that kiss set off in him – that he was gay.

 

Chelsea didn’t know what to think about _this_ kiss.

 

How could you be _kissed_ by something that was invisible? How could something so lacking in form and shape suddenly push him by his shoulders into his own carpet? How could a ‘man’ without the weight and scent of a man press against his lips so hard they were bruising? Never in his life had Chelsea Rice felt such a stark disconnect between what he was _feeling_ and what he was _seeing_ and it was enough to drive him bananas. To simply _prevent_ himself from going crazy he was forced to close his eyes and imagine that the **poltergeist** was a person, a construct of flesh and blood and bone (however faceless and nameless **it** may have been) to make sense of this.

 

So Chelsea shut his gin-bottle eyes and imagined **it** as a person. And then that ‘person’ suddenly pinched his nose. With their lips so tightly locked the boy couldn’t breathe. He held out for a few seconds before breaking the kiss, gasping. And like some sneaky fuck boy teasing more and more sexual favours out of his cornered little drunk girl, **it** slipped **its** fucking tongue inside his mouth. Chelsea gasped. **Its** tongue was so thick and coarse down his throat (and so sudden) that he accidently opened his eyes again – and all he saw was the light fixture and some cracks in the ceiling. He quickly shut them. And as **its** tongue so hungrily played with Chelsea’s (and with his confused mind so occupied with how terrifyingly good that felt), Chelsea didn’t notice the buttons on his shirt being popped open one after the other. It was only when his shirt flew open and he felt the cold chill upon his hot flushed chest that he realised it.

 

Chelsea broke the kiss, opened his eyes.

 

He leaned up on his elbows and asked, perhaps a bit stupidly, “W-what’s going on?” only to have his arms yanked up behind him and his school shirt pulled off of him. When **it** pushed Chelsea back down into the carpet the boy quickly closed his eyes again lest he frighten himself. He felt two strong hands grip his wrists. They were stronger than anyone or anything he had ever felt before. Stronger than even Jonno was that distant April day when he shoved Chelsea through the bushes into a puddle of mud and posted the sight on Facebook. **It** pressed his wrists down either side of him and left him spread-eagled. With his arms apart and his bushy mane of curly brown hair all askew he looked very much like a younger and more sinful version of that dear old carpenter’s son as they nailed him to the cross.

 

He thought **it** was going to kiss him again.

 

But **it** did something else.

**It** pinched his nose. The boy let off a warped giggle, like laughing into a megaphone, and opened his mouth to breathe. _Why is **it** teasing me?_ He thought. It was as though **it** was being playful with him! And then moments later a thick cock-shaped protrusion jutted through his lips, into his mouth and all the way down his gasping throat. Chelsea spluttered. But **it** didn’t stop. Even as the boy beneath **it** kicked his long legs and gagged on **its** cock.

 

If Chelsea had a tenner for every blowjob he’d ever fantasized himself giving he’d be a millionaire. Hell, he’d _seen_ Kyler Moss and Kai Alexander and Jesse Starr do it dozens and dozens of times and flogged himself raw dreaming of the day Jonno finally let him do it. But in reality he’d never even _touched_ someone else’s penis, much less _deep throat_ it. There was no preparation for him. He didn’t know how to relax his muscles or breathe naturally through his nose. There was no warning. So when **it** just jammed **its** cock down his throat what else could he do but gag on it, helplessly?

**It** pulled **its** cock out of his throat only slightly, just until the bulbous ‘head’ bristled his taste buds, then shoved it back down again. Chelsea jerked. He whimpered too but the sound was like a sucking wet wheeze up its cock shaft. But even he could have talked then, even if Chelsea had the breath to splutter out “stop” or “go more slowly, it’s my first time” he knew **it** wouldn’t have listened to him. Suddenly Chelsea was aware of how little control he had over this situation. Worse still, how much this thing really wanted him. He had no idea why **the poltergeist** waited _years_ to finally take him but **its** frustration, wanton desire, rough passion and **its** uncontrollable need to control was evident. 

 

Chelsea was at its mercy.

 

To keep from choking or throwing up he had to train himself how to accept **its** force down his throat. **It** slid in and then out again, in and then out again; in and out, in and out, in and out in a steady rhythm as Chelsea slowly taught himself how to give this being what **it** wanted. He kept himself as still as possible and relaxed his throat until it was another perfect hole for **it** to fuck. And as Chelsea got used to it the speed of **its** thrusts carefully picked up -- in-out, in-out, in-out, in-out -- until **it** grabbed the boy by his hair and gave it one last hard shove. 

 

Had **it** been a human being that had so ruthlessly throat-fucked him, his mouth would have overflowed with cum. But the poltergeist was not human anymore. **Its** orgasm hit Chelsea like something else, not a torrent of semen and a stream of lusty grunts but rather a surge of waves of unmistakably pleasurable delirium passing throughout his body and mind. It was like a drug high. All of a sudden his mind exploded with psychedelic images and sensations bending his mind, streaming ecstasy into every receptor for pleasure that existed in his nervous system and dialling up its potency to 11. **Its** orgasm was the single greatest sensation he had ever felt – far more powerful than any he had ever given to himself. It was all so much. Too much.

 

And so Chelsea passed out.

**********

 

The alarm buzzed its annoying 8am wakeup call. Yawning, Chelsea rolled onto his face, reached up, and slapped the alarm off. He felt groggy. Not a _just-woken-up-from-a-nap-groggy_ but a _morning-after-having-your-stomach-pumped-in-A &E_ groggy. His jaw was killing him. It felt like he’d passed a cantaloupe through it. Then when he tried to get up onto his feet he buckled – his legs were so weak they almost gave out on him. He grabbed the coffee table to steady himself then carefully padded into his bathroom on tired feet.

 

What his mirror showed him was a mangled post-modernist reinterpretation of what Chelsea ought to have looked like. His hair was a bushy mess. His shirt was half open and wrinkled. His slackened red and black striped tie hung like a noose from his collar like the dried tracks of saliva and phlegm tracing traced downwards from the corners of his mouth to his jaw. Although he didn’t realize it when he woke up, Chelsea was naked from his abdomen down. His flaccid penis and light peach fuzz of pubic hair were covered in crusted semen (again) and his pale neck was smattered with bright red hickeys. Clearly, after Chelsea passed out, **it** decided to have some more fun with his body.

_Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck!_ He thought repeatedly. _OH FUCK!_

 

Downstairs a key twisted inside a lock to open a door. Then he heard his mother’s voice call out to him; “Chelsea! Your father and I are home!”


	5. Ben

**********

5.

**********

 

His parents were very complimentary when they got home, especially Margaret. “I’m glad to see you’ve kept the house nice and tidy whilst we were away, Chelsea. Your Grandma White missed you by the way. You should call her later.”

 

Chelsea said he would.

 

After bringing in their luggage Tom declared that he was “famished” and suggested that they go out for a bite to eat at their local café rather than make breakfast after a long trip. Both Margaret and Chelsea agreed. Normally he would have been reluctant to eat with them but for _some reason_ he felt a sudden urge to get out of the house. By now he had changed into jeans shirt and some black denims over a pair of casino red all-star Converse. As soon as Margaret freshened up they took the Nissan over to _Café de Saint-Germain_ at Dulwich village. 

 

Brunch was good. Chelsea and Tom sat to a plate each of Eggs Florentine, Margaret to a vegetarian breakfast. They shared a pot of coffee between them. They talked about the trip and how good it was to see the folks up in Nottingham again, how Grandma White was doing, that her big house needed some renovations and a new coat of paint, how run-down the city was still looking, etc. Chelsea was only half-bored with the idle talk. He didn’t miss his parents but after everything that had happened when they were gone having them around him again was a bit of a relief. Just a bit.

 

Then he got a text.

 

Chelsea checked his phone (it was almost dead, him having forgotten to charge it the night before) and saw the name “Parker Fryer” by the message symbol. For a split second the name didn’t even ring a bell. Then he recalled that stupid trip he made to the CEX in Purley. Parker Fryer was the guy who offered to sell him some PS Vita memory cards on the cheap. At some point he must’ve texted him asking after his memory cards (not that Chelsea remembered doing that). The message was simple enough;

_hey yo hi, got a 32GB PS-V m card on me now 4 u if u still want = £20?_

He almost didn’t believe it. £20 wasn’t bad considering they were going for £50 in some shops. Chelsea quickly thumbed a reply underneath the table.

_Okay, deal. Where can I meet you? At your store?_

Parker’s reply was even quicker.

_no, north dulwich station. u close?_

That’s walking distance from here, thought Chelsea. He wondered what Parker was doing around here if he worked in Purley but reasoned that he must have been a local lad. Chelsea texted back ‘Be there in half an hour’ and saw out the rest of brunch with Tom and Margaret. As they were leaving the cafe Chelsea asked them if he could go to North Dulwich to buy something (which was not exactly a lie). Tom offered to drop him off.

 

Chelsea refused, “I just feel like getting some air, Dad.” But Margaret said it was fine with it. “Your father and I do want to have a word with you when you get back.”

 

He walked them back to the Nissan and watched then drive off. Then after drawing £20 from a Santander cashpoint he made his way up the street through Red Post Hill to the station. Across the street in front of its white painted porticos was Parker, all shaggy-haired and Celtic Cross tattooed; sitting on top of an empty bike rack. He wore a Dark Souls t-shirt (Artorias crouched in meditative contemplation, greatsword slung over his shoulder and Sif curled up around his haunches – Chelsea liked that) navy blue jeans shorn at the knees and Nike trainers, whilst a red pair of Beats by Dre hung from his nape. He was texting someone on his iPhone. 

 

“Hey,” said Chelsea.

 

Parker looked up. “Hey, hi. Glad you got back to me the other day.”

 

“I don’t remember texting you.”

 

He shook his phone. “Well how else would I get your number?”

 

Chelsea decided to leave that point alone. He had something far bigger on his mind than some random text. Instead he asked Parker for the memory card. Grinning (because clearly Mr. Fryer fancied himself some kind of hustler) he took a small transparent case out of his pocket. The fingernail-sized memory card was inside it. “It’s all yours,” he said. Chelsea pocketed it and gave him the twenty in exchange. “Thanks,” he said back. “I appreciate that.”

 

Then he turned to leave.

 

“Oh, uh, hey,” Parker stood up. “Have you got some time to kill?”

 

Chelsea shrugged. “I’m sorry but I really don’t. But thank you.”

 

He almost looked disappointed. “…That’s cool. Well if you ever need any cheap games or anything, you’ve got my number. Maybe throw a text my way?”

 

“Thanks. I’ll be sure to.”

 

There was an awkward moment, like a scene skipping a beat, where Chelsea watched Parker’s eyes thin at him – like the guy wasn’t sure what he was even looking it. _Is he high?_ he wondered. But then just as quickly, Parker pulled a defeated smile and stood up, stretching his calves and forearms. “Okay then. See ya.” Chelsea watched him slip his headphones on, shove his hands into his pockets, and turn back into the train station.

 

**********

 

As he walked home from North Dulwich station, earbuds playing ‘Track 06 – Promise (Reprise)’ into his ears, it occurred to Chelsea that maybe, just maybe, he was losing his mind. That the things he felt he was experiencing were just figments conjured up from an over-cooked brain. There was a time some years ago when Margaret suggested that Chelsea see a therapist to ‘properly process’ his grief over Nancy. Maybe she was right. Maybe this was just his mind finally coming apart at the seams. What could he call it? Early onset schizophrenia?

 

But he didn’t feel crazy.

 

Chelsea looked at his hand. He didn’t feel alienated from his body. He looked out into the streets of Dulwich, with all its used book shops, letting offices and pubs. Old people hobbled by on their walking sticks, young mums in top knots pushing prams along, academy kids walking home with soggy paper cones full of chips in hand. None of it felt alien or beyond him – they weren’t shadows dancing on a cave wall. They were just _people_. He was fucked up in the mind, no doubt, but he knew he wasn’t dissociating. Even now, Chelsea’s nipples felt so chewed and swollen that he had to walk like a pensioner just to stop his shirt from chafing them. He didn’t do that to himself!

 

**It** , whatever **it** was, was real.

 

There was something supernatural harrowing Chelsea Rice.

 

But what did this mean for other things? If this could be real, what wasn’t? Was God (or gods) real? Did vampires exist? Was this some sort of imploding tangent universe or an elaborate 4D simulation he found himself in blithe habitation of? _No_ , he thought to himself. _Thinking like that is what’s gonna drive me crazy. This is happening, I just need to… find a way of wrapping my head around it_. So, if he could accept that, if he could accept that what was happening was real, then he had to find a way of dealing with it. He had to talk to **it**. And he had an idea to do just that.

 

When he got home, the hallway smelt of sizzled sirloin and pepper sauce. It did smell good. His father’s cooking was probably the only thing he missed when they were away in Nottingham.

 

“Chelsea?” It was Margaret, calling to him from the living room. “Could you come here, please?”

 

He found her on their leather sofa, laptop perched over her folded legs as she updated her LinkedIn profile. Chelsea watched her smile at him for what felt like the first time in months, and patted the seat next to her.

 

_Now?_ He thought. “I have homework.”

 

“I’ll only be a minute,” she replied.

 

He sat down unsarcastically, without a sigh or a cross look. That was how their fights always started, and Chelsea wasn’t in the mood to fight right now. Like any kid perhaps, he just wanted to run up to his room and experiment.

 

“I just wanted to say that you did a good job taking care of the house while we were away,” said Margaret. “Your father told me we had nothing to worry about and I’m glad he was right. So, I thought it would be wonderful if you were to take on a few more responsibilities around the house from now on. Don’t you think so too?”

 

_What the hell are you talking about?_ “O-of course,” said Chelsea. “Um… may I be excused?”

 

Her smile collapsed. Maybe she expected more enthusiasm from her son than that? Chelsea could only speculate that she didn’t know her son very well.  “…Okay then. We’ll talk more about it after dinner.”

 

Chelsea muttered “thanks” under his breath (again, unsarcastically) as he left Margaret behind and went upstairs to his bedroom door. He paused there – and felt a knot in his belly. The **poltergeist** wasn’t restricted to his room but it did feel like this was the centre of his… haunting, if you could call it that. Nervousness fought courage until the former gave in and he opened the door. His bedroom was as he left it – tidy. His bed was perfectly made and his bin was empty, and his homework was nestled next to his PC for him to start later. The window was open, so the air was cool. To an unaware observer everything would have seemed so normal.

 

Chelsea shut the door, walked away from it, then asked; “Are you here?” and heard a knock, hard, from outside.

 

Then the air around his skin went cold.

 

**It** was inside.

 

“I…,” the boy swallowed. “I’ve thought of a way we can talk to each other.”

 

In the back of his wardrobe there was an old toy chest filled with the silly things he used to play with as a kid, like Lego sets and dolls, a bag of marbles and a container of hardened playdough, matchbox cars, a transformer, a harmonica, a yoyo, etc. He hadn’t touched any of it since Nancy disappeared – and then one day he just got sick of seeing it all slung over his room so he hid them all away. But there was something of value left inside. It was an old Etch a Sketch.

 

Chelsea took off his satchel, placed the Etch a Sketch upon the floor, then stepped back by about a metre and sat down, folding his legs beneath him. “My Dad gave this to me when I was nine. Do you know how to use it?” Immediately, the boy saw its two white knobs twist around to carve writing into the ‘screen’.

 

**YES** , **it** drew.

 

Chelsea exhaled a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “Wow. Okay. Okay.”

 

**ARE YOU SCARED?** **It** drew.

 

“Yes,” he admitted. “But I want… I want to understand you. Will you talk to me?”

 

**YES** , **it** drew. **ASK ME WHAT YOU WANT TO KNOW.**

 

“What’s your name?” Asked Chelsea.

 

**BEN** , **it** drew. **CALL ME BEN.**

 

Chelsea almost tittered. It was a name so anti-climactic you could laugh at it. ‘ **Ben**?’ Somehow, he was expecting a name a bit more dramatic and dark and brooding, like Oswald or Callum or Solomon. But **Ben**? There was a Ben in his history class with a bowl cut, an overbite, and an addiction to his 3DS XL. It was hard to imagine being haunted by a ‘ **Ben’**. But here they were.

 

“I like your name,” said Chelsea.

 

**NO YOU DON’T** , drew **Ben**. **BUT I LIKE YOURS**.

 

Chelsea liked his own name too. Growing up he was the recipient of a lot of Mourinho and Drogba jokes, and people either scowled or laughed harder when he said he “didn’t get it” but nevertheless he knew the name suited him. He liked that **Ben** liked it. And it was then that he realized that there was so much that he wanted to ask **him**. Like what was **he**? Was **he** truly a poltergeist? If **he** was, how did **he** die? _When_ did **he** die? Did this happen to everyone when they died or was **he** special?

 

It didn’t occur to him that **Ben** wasn’t equally as interested in a conversation.

 

**STILL FEELING SORE?** Drew **Ben**.

 

Chelsea opened his lips to answer, when a lip-shaped sensation pressed upon his neck. A pair of invisible fingertips swept his curly chestnut hair over to one shoulder and kissed around his neck to the nape. The boy sighed, eyes slipping shut.

 

“Yes…” he whispered. “ **Ben** , I thought we were going to talk…” and when Chelsea overheard the Etch a Sketch shake he opened a single eye to see what **Ben** drew next.

 

It was **LET’S TALK AFTERWARDS**.

 

And then **Ben** kissed him.

 

**His** lips were as soft and plush as any living person’s, and the passion behind them was just as demanding. It was still too disorienting for Chelsea to keep his eyes open, that disconnect between what he was feeling and what he couldn’t see, so he kept his eyes tightly shut as **Ben’s** thick tongue prised its way into his mouth, stifling a soft little moan of approval.

 

“Wait,” Chelsea broke the kiss, suddenly thoughtful. “Lock the door first.”

 

Instantly the lock knob switched shut, sealing them inside with each other. Chelsea felt two immensely strong hands grab him by the shoulders and lift him off the floor. _Holy shit…_ thought the boy, as he opened his eyes watched himself being _levitated_ off the carpet and onto the bed. _Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit!_ And then, piece by piece, **Ben** began undressing him. **He** unbuttoned Chelsea’s jeans shirt first (as he leaned up for **Ben** to pull it off) then unlaced his Converse, unzipped his denims, and pulled them all off, along with his socks and boxers, his stiff cock flopping free and slapping his belly, five inches stiff and oozing pre-cum.

 

Chelsea was suddenly naked again, his flesh going goose by the open window. But he wasn’t scared this time. His chest was flushed red and his heart was pounding, but he wasn’t scared because this wasn’t _like_ last time. Last night and the night before **Ben** was a force, a compulsion, an angry explosion of lust placing Chelsea at the centre of **his** outburst. But now…

 

“Remember my parents are downstairs,” Chelsea said, biting his lip. “So don’t make me scream.”

 

He didn’t even realize how turned on he was. He had more than 2 TBs of porno stashed away on his Iomega (and added to the collection at least once a day) but nothing he’d ever downloaded and touched himself to compared to the intoxicant mix of nervousness, excitement, horror and pleasure of invisible teeth clenching down around his nipple. Chelsea bit his lip as **Ben** bit his stiff pink nipple, moving from one to the other and back again, making the boy’s toes curl. Chelsea couldn’t help but moan, slightly, wary not to make too much noise. Teeth then became a tongue, slithering around his bare chest by the tip, tracing down to the fuzzy tuft of hazelnut pubic hair around above his cock. He wondered: was **Ben** going to suck him off again? Like that morning so many days ago when he woke up with crotch full of dried cum? Chelsea sighed at the memory, hazy as it was, when **Ben** flipped him over by the shoulder, in one fluid motion; first he was on his back, then he was on his stomach. Chelsea landed with a “Woof!”, his chin just grazing the blue and white polka dot pillow, as **Ben’s** hands seized Chelsea’s wrists and spread them up towards the header board. **Ben** then pushed the boy’s ankles off the edge of the bed, splaying him out, and Chelsea imagined how he must have looked from without – like the flayed man of a Bolton banner.

 

The etch-a-sketch’s knobs turned again.

 

**JUST RELAX** , **Ben** said.

 

Chelsea could barely keep up with his own thoughts, much less command his body to relax. He shivered with a strange mix of fright and arousal – but with each passing moment his body succumbed to the sensations of what his mind could not make sense of – and the latter came to overpower the former. He was almost an inanimate doll to be toyed with (or he may as well have been) then, when **Ben** spread open his little bum, placed a cold thick fingertip against the bud of his anus, and pushed through. Chelsea moaned into his pillow. He could feel the shape of **Ben’s** finger pushing into him, his pink little ring of anal flesh expanding around the shape of his first knuckle then bottoming out at the second. **Ben** paused a moment, perhaps to let Chelsea adjust, to give him a moment to breathe in and enjoy it, before slowly pulling **his** finger out to the first knuckle and then carefully pushing it back in.

 

“Ugh,” _He’s finger-fucking me_ , thought a groaning Chelsea. “Ugh…”

 

The room was completely silent if not for the sound of Chelsea groaning into his pillow. Without him even realizing it, his hips lifted off the bed, stiff cock wobbling beneath him, and he carefully began to work his hips around **Ben’s** finger. He turned his hips slowly, flexing his bum around the intrusion like a Go-Go dancer, just to get deeper, just to draw out the pleasure.

 

**Ben** pushed Chelsea back down into the bed, carefully pulling his finger out of the schoolboy’s arse again, this time completely.

 

“W-why did you stop?” He asked. “Ben? Please don’t stop…”

 

**Ben** didn’t answer.

 

Instead **he** spread open Chelsea’s buttocks with **his** two strong hands, once again exposing that pink rosebud to the cool afternoon air. Chelsea shivered when a cold hard thickness pressed against it – but it wasn’t **Ben’s** fingertip.

 

It was **his** cockhead. 

 

And it was huge.

 

Chelsea, suddenly panicking, reflexively reached back to push it away, but his hand swatted through nothing but air. If he was a celebrity and TMZ had hidden cameras, all they would have seen was a lad face down in his bed waving his hand over his arse like some boozed-up fool after a bender. But Chelsea felt that huge cockhead up against his arsehole like a baton, it felt thicker than his wrist, and it was no drunken delusion. It was real.

 

**_He_** _can touch me_ … Chelsea realized, _but I can’t touch **him**?_

 

The boy suddenly felt the fright creeping up his back again.

 

But from the corner of his eye, he saw the knobs of the Etch-a-Sketch turn around and forth.

 

**I WANT YOU, CHELSEA.  
**

 

And then **Ben** thrust into him.

 

“AAAAGGGGHH!”

 

If the door wasn’t so tightly shut or the windows were open, his parents would have heard his scream from downstairs. Chelsea shoved his own face into the pillow and bit down hard to keep from screaming a second time as **Ben’s** thick cock slid through his rectum. He felt the whole lower half of his body surrender to the intrusion, his hips bending upright, his thighs shaking. The boy mouthed the word “no” but his breath was gone. He couldn’t speak. And when he leaned to try to pull away **Ben** immediately pushed him back down.

 

**STOP FIGHTING IT** said **Ben**. **JUST RELAX.  
**

 

“I can’t,” he whimpered. “Ben, it hurts…”

 

But **he** didn’t listen -- just told Chelsea to relax more. But he too overwhelmed by **Ben’s** girth to think straight – or feel the other things **Ben** was doing to him. He couldn’t feel **Ben** draw his legs from the bedsides and fold them at his hips, nor did he feel **Ben’s** hand pressing down on his lower back to force his hips up.

 

“Ough!” It was a muffled noise, a nonsensical jumble of vowels that leapt from his throat reflexively, gripping handfuls of his bedding so tight his knuckles whitened as he buried his face into his pillow to blot out the cries. He had put things up his arse before. As Taffy Trap, he posted GIFs of himself shoving his index and middle fingers into his own arse, all sticky with KY jelly. He would never forget the ‘jump shock’ of him brushing against his own prostate. It was the first time he had ever cum without touching his penis.

 

But this was so different.

 

As **Ben** bottomed out at what felt like his _colon_ , they both stopped. Chelsea took the moment exhale the breath he didn’t realize he was holding, panting and gasping for air. He felt the sweat dripping off his forehead. He felt his legs shaking. And then he felt **Ben’s** cock slowly pull back out again, inch by inch, until his cockhead stretched his anus even wider – and then thrust back in one smooth lunge.

 

“Uuuuuugh!” Cried Chelsea, “Uuuuuugh! Ugh! Ugh!”

 

This wasn’t the first time **Ben** had fucked him. But this wasn’t like the first time. Then, Chelsea had less notion of what was happening to him. It was half-reality, half-dream in a way. And he phased out of comprehension so fast that everything else **Ben** did with his body that night felt like a blur, a mish-mash of agony, pain, pleasure, excitement and fear. But this was different. When **Ben** grabbed his wrists again and held them beside the pillow he was groaning into, when **Ben** spread his legs wider, when **Ben** pulled his cock back and forth out of his rectum, he was aware of all of it. Every second, every moment, and every breath of **Ben** fucking Chelsea into submission. Each thrust jerked the boy’s whole body forward and expel a cry of both pain and pleasure, on and on in steady rhythm and the fight evaporated from his body and submitted to anything and everything Ben wanted to do to it. Once he gave in, his body loosened in response, and suddenly, began to accept **Ben’s** cock like a well-trained whore. Chelsea moaned with newfound delight as it glided into his arsehole, like the aperture was like some slickened cunt. He felt so used and controlled, so overpowered, so frightened yet so willing.

 

**Ben** wanted him.

 

**Ben** wanted him in a way no one else on this earth seemed to want him.

 

**Ben** wanted him and **he** would not stop until **he** got what **he** wanted. 

 

And more than anything, Chelsea wanted to be _wanted_.

 

The boy suddenly found himself mewling like a kitten and pushing his hips back into each jutting thrust as **Ben** pounded him into the bedding. He panted for breath as his feet flailed beneath his folded thighs, his hair tossed back and forth as the headboard rattled the wall so hard he feared the bed legs might snap. And then something _did_.

 

**He** came like a torrent. And there was no warning. There weren’t any hard grunts transforming into desperate sighs of satisfaction. **Ben’s** orgasm hit Chelsea like before – like a wave. A warm ecstasy of relief spreading out across his body as a torrent of psychedelic images and colours bombarded his mind. His toes curled, his spine shivered and his eyes dilated; he saw stars and ether and the ripples of time all filtered through a new eye, leaving him awash and astonished by a current of chaotic pleasure. Left in its wake was a limp, sweaty, breathless mess of a boy entangled in his plain white bedding, soaked in his bodily fluids.

 

Chelsea groaned, rolling onto his back. When he looked down at his cock he saw ropes of spunk thrown over all his ginger brown fuzz. There were cold cum stains on mattress too. Apparently, he’d orgasmed at least twice without even realizing it – without even touching himself.

 

“…What the fuck…” Chelsea whispered. “This is so crazy…”

 

**Ben** kissed his forehead, gently. And on the Etch-a-Sketch **he** wrote…

 

**THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING.  
**

 

“Chelsea?” It was Tom, calling up to him from downstairs. “Come down for dinner! It’s ready!”


End file.
